Forbidden Gospel
by schillingklaus
Summary: Multiplot Romance: Dustin Brooks discovers an ancient book in the PCA library and struggles hard in order to find its significance and its history, supported more or less voluntaily by various fellow pupils nd experts dwelling off campus. It finally turns out as a lost heretical gospels.


**Forbidden Gospel**

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**Klaus Schilling**

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**Rating**

PG-13

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**Disclaimer**

This is a derivative work of _Nickelodeon_ shows and other subsequently specified quoted and paraphrased works of art I don't own.

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**Acknowledgements**

The story is written for _LiveJournal_-Community _Tamingthemuse_, prompt _Anathema_.

The story is written for _LiveJournal_-Community _Paranormal 25_, prompt _Omen_.

The story alludes to a heretical gospel _According To Judas_, both the indirect references contained in the writings of patristic author Ireneus of Lyon and a text unearthed in Egypt a few decades ago and made partly available thanks to the Mæcenas Foundation. No attempt of giving a scientifically acceptable translation of passages has been made here.

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**Synopsis**

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**Genres**

Mystery, Spritual, Family, Friendship, Science Fiction, Fluff et alii

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**Fandoms**

The story occurs in the identified **universe** of a huge variety of current or past live action shows produced for _Nickelodeon_ channel, including, but not restricted to, _Victorious_, _Zoey 101_, _The iCarly Show_, _Drake & Josh_, _How To Rock_, _Big Time Rush_, _Unfabulous_, _Ned__'__s Declassified School Survival Guide_, _True Jackson VP_, _Supah Ninjas_, _House Of Anubis_, _Just Jordan_ … and makes heavy use of a variety of members of their casts.

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**Prerequisites**

Knowledge of as many _Nickelodeon_ live action fandoms, especially _Zoey 101_, is truly appreciated, but, by design, rudimentary knowledge of the main characters and plot lines, as taught by the corresponding _Wikipedia_ pages, is sufficient.

* * *

**Timeline**

The narration starts in fall 2008.

The following indicates which episodes, season, and movies are supposed to be set in which academic year:

**2003 to 2004**: _Drake & Josh_: Season 1, Season 2 unto _Little Diva_.

**2004 to 2005**: _Drake & Josh_: Season 2 since _Driver License_, Season 3 unto _Helen__'__s Surgery_; _Zoey 101_: Season 1; _Unfabulous_: Season 1, Season 2; _Ned__'__s Declassified School Survival Guide_: Season 1, Season 2

**2005 to 2006**: _Drake & Josh_: Season 3 since _Foam Finger_; _Zoey 101_: Season 2; _Unfabulous_: Seasion 3; _Ned__'__s Declassified School Survival Guide_: Seasion 3

**2006 to 2007**: _Zoey 101_: Season 3 unto _Drippin__'__ Episode_; _Drake & Josh_, season four; _Drake & Josh_: _Merry Christmas_ as a dream of Drake Parker; _Fairly Odd Movie_ as a dream of Drake Parker; _Shredderman Rules_; _Last Days Of Summer_; _Just Jordan_: Season 1; _Star and Stella SaveThe World_ — never aired — as a dream of Stella Rivera. _The iCarly Show_: _Pilot_

**2007 to 2008**: _Zoey 101_: Season 3 since _Son Of A Dean_, Season 4; _The iCarly Show_: Season 1 since _iLike Jake_; _Just Jordan_: Season 2

**2008 to 2009**: _Spectacular!_; _The iCarly Show_: Season 2; _True Jackson VP_: Season 1 unto _The Dance_

**2009 to 2010**: _Bigtime Rush_: Season 1; _The iCarly Show_: Season 3; _The iCarly Show_: Season 4 and thereafter as a dream of Carly Shay; _Best Player_; _True Jackson VP_: Season 2 since _Back To School_; _The Troop_: Season 1; _True Jackson VP_: Season 3 as a dream of True Jackson; _Victorious_: Season 1

**2010 to 2011**: _House Of Anubis_: Season 2; _The Troop_: Season 2; _Bigtime Rush_: Season 2 unto _Big Time Move_; _Bigtime Rush_: anything thereafter as a dream of Kendall Knight; _House Of Anubis_: Season 1; _Supah Ninjas_: Season 1; _Bucket & Skinner__'__s Epic Adventures_: Season 1; _Rags_; _Victorious_: Season 2; _Victorious_: Season 3 and 4 as a dream of Victoria Vega

**2011 to 2012**: _How To Rock_: Season 1; _House Of Anubis_: Season 2

* * *

**Summary**

A codex with fragments of the lost illegal _Gospel according to Judas Ischarioth_ is discovered on the campus of Pacific Coast Academy by student Dustin Brooks and identified as such only after some long procedure.

Dustin is afraid of the consequences of his findings, of which he is initially only able to figure that it is very old. He needs to find experts both on and off the campus able to make sense of his discovery, but whom is he supposed to trust really?

New York City's witch Kreuftlva, a guest character from _True Jackson VP_: _True Parade_, appears to be such an expert.

This is seen as a threat by campus priest Father Maccurdy, a person mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iWant A Record_.

**Couples** include: Kreuftlva / Father Maccurdy, Zoey Brooks / Jerry Crony alias Olivary Biallo — from _Zoey 101_: _School Dance_, Quinn Pensky / Cal — from _The iCarly Show_: _iGo Nuclear_. Lola Martinez / Drake Parker, Dustin Brooks / Carly Shay, Chase Matthews / Addie Singer, Logan Reese / Maris Bingham, Michael Barret / Wendy Gellar — from _Drake & Josh_: _Number One Fan_, with a family name is chosen because of the samce actress's character in third party owned _Camp Rock_, Stacey Dillsen / Eric Blonowitz, Wayne "Fire Wire" Gilbert / Mindy Crenshaw et alii.

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**Contents**

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Chapter 1 Prologue

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Chapter 2 What to do?

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2.1 Scooter and Jack

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2.2 More Reactions

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2.3 Favourite Web Show

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2.4 Fire Wire

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2.5 Zoey And Chase

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2.6 Crossfire

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Chapter 3 Consuela

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3.1 Greek

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3.2 Chain Letter

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3.3 Zoey's Crisis

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3.4 Betrayed Friendship

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3.5 The Quarterback

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3.6 The Biggest Traitor

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3.7 Wanted

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3.8 Megan's Ban

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3.9 Samantha's Evil Revenge

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Chapter 4 No More Carly's Web Show

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4.1 Tyler At PCA

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4.2 The Codex

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4.3 Samantha's Debts

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4.4 Begging For Bucks

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4.5 Claire Sawyer

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4.6 Fudge Balls

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4.7 Exploding Muffins

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4.8 Zoey's Wrath

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4.9 News From Megan

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4.10 Censored

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Chapter 5 Pernicious Sam

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5.1 Officer Vega

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5.2 Back To The Pageants

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5.3 Strange Mr. Takato

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5.4 Dingo Channel

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5.5 The Return Of Jeffry Norkin

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5.6 Fallen From The Tree

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5.7 The Champion

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5.8 Sam gets arrested.

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Chapter 6 Zoey's Assistant

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6.1 Rowenda Arlington

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6.2 Prom Outfits

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6.3 A Trace Of Miles Brody

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6.4 Ficus Monroe

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6.5 Olivary Biallo

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6.6 Answer From Miles

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6.7 Fredrick Figglehorn

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6.8 Freddie kills Fred.

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6.9 Zoey's Decision

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6.10 Michael and Biallo meet again.

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6.11 Reconciling Fredward And Fredrick

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Chapter 7 Coming Home

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7.1 Ornations

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7.2 Jackson Colt

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7.3 List Of Alumni

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7.4 Overprotective

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7.5 Anticipating Carly's Arrival

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7.6 Polish

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7.7 The Opening

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7.8 The Ultranerd

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7.9 Cal

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7.10 Talking To Carly

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7.11 Zoey And The Shark

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7.12 Carly's Departure

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7.13 Another Appearance Of Takato

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7.14 Dissolved Sculpture

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Chapter 8 A New Casting Show

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8.1 Natural Power

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8.2 America Sings

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8.3 Competitor

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8.4 And the winner is …

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8.5 The Sponsored Surgery

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8.6 Gone Without A Trace

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8.7 Good-Bye Letter

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8.8 Looking For The Key

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8.9 The Fake Sick

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8.10 Miles Replies

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8.11 Mad Offer

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8.12 May the casting begin!

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Chapter 9 Dingo

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9.1 The Gospel According To Judas

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9.2 Totally Terry

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9.3 The Auxiliary Librarian

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9.4 Molten Brass

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9.5 The Treehouse

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9.6 Locket Of Doom

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9.7 The Skull

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9.8 The Stink

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9.9 Fredrick And Ashley

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9.10 Nevel Papperman

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Chapter 10 Spring Of Decisions

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10.1 Spring Break

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10.2 Redstone Gulch

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10.3 True Jackson VP

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10.4 Zoey goes Mad.

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10.5 Drake For Senior Prom

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10.6 Origin Of The Silver Hammers

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10.7 Missy Robinson

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Chapter 11 Kreuftlva Versus MacCurdy

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11.1 Wake Of Prom

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11.2 Prom Night

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11.3 After Prom

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Chapter 12 Epilogue

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**Chapter 1 Prologue**

Hello, my name is Brooks … Dustin Brooks, a child of the state of Louisiana, but migrated already as a baby to California.

Once upon a time, I was a student of Pacific Coast Academy, one of the most prestigious and elitarian boarding schools in the region of greater Los Amgeles, the urban conglomeration including Hollywood, the world's most renowned centre of short-lived fame and superficial glory, also known as modern Babylonia.

But even in the metropole of high technology mass entertainment, the words of the holy seers were scribbled on the concrete blocks lining the metropolitan statios and the residence areas of the high nobility, yet generally graciously ignored so far.

Little surprise, the students at Pacific Coast Academy, a school sponsored to a big deal by the capitalist powermongwers of the Hollywood business, such as Malcolm Reese,[1:1] Alan Krimp,[1:2] and Fujizaki,[1:3] were usually little concerned with anything making up the deeper sense of mankind and the universe and thus little more but shallow-minded future actors and other stars aspiring for getting rich and famous as soon as possible. I

This was especially the case for starlets such as Lola Martinez. now a senior at Pacific Coast Academy engaged to an equally shallow minded quarterback Vincent Blake, or this quarterback's sister Ashley.[1:4]

The latter, now still a middle school girl, had been one of the most awarded child stars at Hollywood, but with the start of her pubescence, things were supposed to go through changes.

The worst case of all was Logan Reese, the son of aforementioned Malcolm Reese, and by all means the most reckless teenage coxcomb ever of Hollywood, and, even worse than that, he was drawing many kids that dared to call him a friend into a swamp of absolutely materialist mentality. And I was among them, as for quite a few years, I had depended a lot on money from errand jobs for this coxcomb.

The situation at Palmwood and Hollywood School for the Professional Performance Arts was no different, no, it was even worse, as those schools were dedicated to educating future Hollywood stars, while Pacific Coast Academy was at least officially geared towards general education.

But we have to return to this later on, as it is more important now to describe the circumstances at Pacific Coast Academy in which one discovery was made somewhere on the campus, more precisely, in an alcove in the school's library usually covered by heavy book shelves. It was not a really well visited spot in the library, but tonight, I, a middle school boy, had to do some research and remove some books off the shelf in order to reach for another tome. Accidentally, this book slipped off the wooden planks, reveiling a hole where another book was lying. I assumed naïvely that that book had fallen off the shelves into the acove and wanted to pick it up and get it back. Alas, the work was falling open in the process, reveiling some ancient symbols and script, a collection of scrolls.

I could not make any sense of it. And I decided to talk to some of my class mates about the discovery. I feared uncanny things due to the age of the possible scrolls, but I did not know yet what the book really contained — a copy of a lost heretical gospel from the late second century, a book which had been banned by the churches of the world already back then. Reading and using this book was declared as triggering an anathema. Without knowing better, I took the ancient looking bundle of scribbles and returned them to the alcove, covering the gap with as many normal books as only possible in order to deny the fact of a surprising discovery as much as possible.

But I knew pretty well that this was only a temporary solution that would not hold a candle, and it was pretty obvious that the discovery would keep me forever busy with nightmares of the worst sort if nothing got done for real about the book, whatever it was.

* * *

**Chapter 2 What to do?**

* * *

**2.1 Scooter and Jack**

The first person to converse with about the ancient looking discovery was my room mate Robert Carmichael, also known — or so I used to name him — as "Scooter",[2:1] a guy from Belleview in the upper San Diego County. He was even a whole lot more easily scared than me. Robbie suggested me to fill the gap in the wall behind the shelves with brick and mortar, forgetting about the whole thing before the ancient bookworms would spread diseases or something like that.

This may have resolved his fears, but sneaking into the library with a whole tub of mortar and masons' tools would have been impossible.

My other room pal was Jacob Ross[2:2] from Alabama, and he was not much more enthusiastic about my findings, especially not about the weird letters or symbols, whatever.

* * *

**2.2 More Reactions**

The other eighthgraders had been informed pretty fast by Scooter's oral propaganda, although information got distorted slightly by means of whispering, as was well known.

Ashley Blake, aforementioned little diva, asked me at the beginning of our geography lessons whether I had found a manuscript for a play being set in the old times. "I have always wanted to play Cleopatra, the wife of … dunno, some ancient guy?"

Scooter remarked that Cleo had been very hot, and then he would play her husband, whoever it was. He was by absolutely no stretch a gifted actor, and no ancient script would ever provide him with the necessary talent.

Ashley glared viciously at our class mate, grunting something like "not in a gazillion of years!"

I had to disappoint Ashley by stating that the book was ancient, it was not a book containg a play or novel from the ancient times.

But Ashley refused to give up, claiming that it may be an ancient play about people from back then, written in ancient languages.

Honestly, I was not able to disprove her because I did not understand zilch about the content of the scribbles, for I could not make sense of them.

My former crush Wendy Gellar remarked that she would love to read those long since lost love letters of Cleopatra to Alexander the Great, and she hoped to find them in the library. "I have written so many love letters to Drake Parker, I could fill a whole bookshelf with them! Maybe they will be found in some thousands of years." Her crush on teenage rock legend Drake Parker, now twenty years old, was very famous at Pacific Coast Academy. She had learned composing rock tunes just in order to impress him, but she was now really gifted in that area.

Too bad the two of them had been like three centuries apart from each other, but the idea of invading the private sphere of people, even though they had lived ages ago, did not exactly make me comfortable. And in the case of Wendy it was really obnoxious — or at least I had got that impression.

Four years ago, I had suffered a lot from getting rejected by Wendy because she had only got eyes for Drake who was the elder brother of her best friend, Megan Parker. The latter was, by the way, living in the same street as Robert Carmichael's family, and Wendy's family lived only a few streets away.

Wendy suggested to ask Megan about the old book, as she was collecting ancient sponges,[2:3] and thus naturally predestrined for reading old crap.

For me, the connection was not really obvious, and connecting ancient sponges was weird indeed. But Wendy could be very annoying if she did not get her suggestions recognised, so I decided to give in, at least for the moment, because I was not knowing any better. Maybe I would also be able to check whether Megan looked really very much like her cousin Carly, as claimed by Wendy.

* * *

**2.3 Favourite Web Show**

Carly Shay was an excessively nice, pretty, and smart teenage girl from Seattle in the state of Washington, and she was especially the host of my favourite web show, well the favourite web show of almost all of us kids here.

Robbie claimed that I had a crush on her, but he was going too far, wasn't he?

Er … blush … maybe … or maybe not …

And now it was time for yet another episode of said interweb event, something for which we middle school kids flocked in droves to the big screen in our lounge which had been adjusted by Quinn Pensky, a nerdy senior girl here at Pacific Coast Academy, in order to allow for watching interweb shows,

Quinn used to be one of the best friends of my elder sister Zoey, a blond Mary Sue also renowned as "Miss Perfect". They used to be close, but are nowhere near like that any longer, and I was kind of sort of the reason for this, well, at least in part.

Last year, Quinn had abused me shamelessly in order to hide her completely unsuited relationship with aforementioned Logan Reese, the shallow-minded coxcomb. Quinn had used me as a fake prom partner, and Logan had done the same to their class mate Stacey Dillsen, a girl that was very unpopular because of talking with a lisp and being obsessed with cotton swabs. During the prom it had turned out that Quinn and Logan were living in a secret cocubinate, surprising most kids in Zoeuy's clique. And Zoey was horribly upset about that, thence abandoning all contact with Quinn, and there was also another reason, probably even a stronger one, to be seen below. She was very protective and would never have allowed me to be Quinn's prom partner, fake or not, had she not been kind of depressed and thus too busy to notice, but this is yet another tale.

Quinn's nerdiness had suffered a lot, and she had been more or less a traitor to herself by becoming Logan's attachment, but that was another story altogether.

Zoey was not happy about my favourite web show, not that she deemed it bad, but the co-moderator was a certain Samantha Puckett, also known as Trisha Kirby.[2:4], the very epitome of "bad girl".

Three years ago, Samantha had been here as a student because the child care department of Seattle had decided to give her and her monozygotic twin sister Melanie[2:5] a chance to get away from the obnoxious environment of a family stuck in the swamp of organised crime of Seattle. Melanie had exploited her chance as much as possible, totally unlike Samantha who had to be expelled a few weeks later, for the following event:

I had been in the same chemistry lab class as Trisha, and our teacher had forced me to be her laboratory partner because she had not been sticking to the laboratory rules but always up to mixing explosives and poisons, and I had been known as the most reasonable guy in the class and able to control her better.

But she was not to controll, quite the contrary, she had turned it around and changeed my mind by seducing me in a ruthless manner.

I had thought it very cool dating Samantha, older by two years, but Zoey was of a different opinion, as she had claimed that this bad girl had got a very evil influence on me. With hindsight I had to admit now that she had been absolutely right.

My sister had commanded her friend Chase to talk us apart, and the bushy dork, who had always had a crush on her, had not been able to refrain from doing anything for her, even if he had been very clumsy at that. Indeed, he had been successful in dissuading Samantha by telling her to have more fun with older boys, and she had indeed had fun … with him instead of with me.

I had been thoroughly jealous by that, although it had not been really Chase's intention to steal my girlfriend. As a side effect, Zoey had been for the first time jealous of a girl because of Chase, but I have to talk about this a lot more at some later point. I had even beaten Chase lightly for his girl theft, and then Samantha had trashed him again. Fortunately I had not wanted to take Samantha back, because she would just have cheated on me again with another boy at the next possible occasion, and that would not have made much sense to me. Little later, Zoey had denounced Samantha to Dean Rivers and got her removed from the campus. I

Her aforementioned sister Melanie was still among us, and she had been the first to inform us kids about the great web show of Samantha and Carly. It was really amazing how she was different from her twin, she was at the same time a cheerio girl and the class president and valedictorian of the sophomores.

OK, now I get better back to the current session of the web show, the first of this academic year. Fredward Benson, the technical producer of the site, had invited his new nerd friend Shane Diamond.[2:6]

Hey, Shane did not really look like a nerd, and the girls almost lost their mind for him, both those here at Pacific Coast Academy and the girls in the web cast, videlicet Samantha and Carly. His task was that of perrforming some interesting experiment with magnetism and so on. Quinn would have loved watching this, but she had not had the time to care about it since having started to waste her time with Logan Reese. Samantha and Carly were total hypocritics, though, as they were talking about the colness of science and stuff, while they used to look down on Fredward, a member of their school's science club. Did I sense the classical dilemma, two girls and best friends fighting over the same guy? Well, we would hardly get to witness what would happen between the sessions of the web show, but it was not hard to guess that there was something going on.

Of course I was not jealous, was I? Er … blush … bear with it! Some dreams just have to come to an end sooner than others. I sighed because I was now probably forced to move on, although I still denied to have ever had a crush on sweet, nice, smart, and pretty Carly Shay.

* * *

**2.4 Fire Wire**

My class pal Henry Nolston[2:7] had suggested me to ask some nerd about the letters or symbols in the worn-down book hidden in the library.

Oh well, Quinn was out of question because she had abused me shamelessly for the prom, but there were fortunately others at Pacific Coast Academy.

Unfortunately my number one choice would have been Miles Brody,[2:8] who had graduated before the recently ceased summer break. And he was gone, which was a pity because nobody else was more familiar with our library than Miles. I did not give up on contacting this bookworm in his new place, but I would have had to find out about it first.

For the time being I stuck to a certain Wayne Gilbert, the most extreme dork and nerd at Pacific Coast Academy, who was much better known as "Fire Wire". This decision was a reluctant one, as many of us deemed Wayne as weirder and more creepy than evil Nevel Papperman, a guy who had already tried several times to ruin Carly and her web show, but was failing all the time. Although Wayne was afraid of girls, he did not hesitate hitting on them, including Zoey. The most creepy fact, however, was that he considered himself as the new or the next Dr. Doom, a hi-tech villain from some science fiction or fantasy cartoon.[2:9]

Zoey of course would not have considered him even if he had been the only guy left in the world, for she did not want a high school senior who was still addicted to cartoons and action figures. And she would hardly have wanted me contacting him, but she did not know any trustworthy nerds, anyways.

My decision had been a tough one, but Wayne Gilbert had already helped us deciphering the secret of a certain Mr. Takato, an elderly Japanese guy who had roamed our campus last year, but who did not relly exist. Wayne had done so by equating Takato with some Dr. Strange, another toon hero or villain or something like that, as nobody cared.

Wayne had got the insane attitude of cackling way too much, and I had to feel this when entering his dormitory room which he shared with two fellow nerds. He wondered why I was trying to waste his time, as he was apparently reading some toons. "You owe me something for that, like … a date with your sister!"

I coughed and moaned, because I knew that if there was something Zoey would impossibly ever forgive me it would probably be the offense of matching here with some creepy guy, even only for one evening. Alas, I had already committed such a capital sin about a year ago , to some degree at least. I had needed a web camera in order to allow my mother, who was now living with dad in London, to chat with me over the interweb. As aforementioned, I had used to earn money by working as Logan Reese's errand boy, but he had treated me like dirt, almost upsetting my sister so much to get her hitting him with something hard.[2:10] She had ever since told me to refrain from working for him. Unfortunately, Kazu, owner of our Japanese bar, was only allowed kids of at least eighth grade, and I had been slightly too young. So I had been forced to find another way to get such a cam. And Wayne was able to build such devices from electronic junk, so he had offered me to build me such a cam in turn for Zoey's phone number,[2:11] which she had not yet found out, or else I would maybe not have come to live to tell.

So I tried negotiating and hoped to be able to offer him something else. "How about a picture of the undergarments of Lola Martinez?"

Lola was a pretty Latina who had been Zoey's room mate and best friend for about three years, until everything had fallen apart like a house of cardboard pieeces. I will tell you why a bit later. But now I owe you an explanation for the fact that I had got pictures of the bras and panties of my sister's room mates. Basically, Zoey allowed me to stay in her dormitory room over night whenever I was afraid of something, although I had been there for missing my sister. While there, I had taken pictures of the Hollywood startlet's lingerie, in order to impress my male classmates. I had even made a few bucks by selling those pics over the interweb, but had been forced to take them down when the girls had been about to find out. Due to the end of their frienship, Zoey would hardly have reproached me for selling digital photographs of her former best pal's underwear.

Wayne Gilbert's jaw dropped like an iron block, and his eyes bugged out like crazy. "oh, hell yeah!"

I do not want to describe the things Wayne would do with the pictures … dirty, creepy things.

So, a deal had been struck, and now I started talking about my discovery in the library. I was told to try to draw some of the letters or symbols, and I did that.

Firewire deemed those Greek letters, which I should have thought about earlier, given that I knew some of them from mathematics and physics, you know, angles and some units in various formulæ.

But of course not even Wayne was able to make sense from just this, he needed to see a page from the manuscript, or a picture of it. And he was not an expert for the Greek language, after all, but he knew someone who knew someone who …

Well, the first person he could think about was a certain … Megan Parker, aforementioned neighbour of Robbie Carmichael and sister of rock star Drake. Wayne knew her because he had sold her on the interweb quite a few devices in order to pull pranks on Drake and on Joshuah Nichols, the step brother of the Parker kids. In other words, I could have saved the whole detour by following straight Wendy's idea instead of wasting one of the pics of Lola's undergarments … well, crap happens, so better bear with it!

* * *

**2.5 Zoey And Chase**

OK, I have already insinuated that Lola and Zoey, inspite of having been best friends for three years, had ceased communication at the begin of the academic year, and this is why:

After Chase had understood that Zoey was vulnerable to jealousy, he had wondered how to use for his advantage and make Zoey fess up to him, given that he had been too much of a coward.

And Lola had helped him in this enterprise by feigning to date him right in front of Zoey's eyes.[2:12], just a few weeks after the dirty affair of Chase and Samantha. In turn, Chase served Lola as an object for acting practice, more precisely, Lola needed to learn making out for the screen with uncomely guys, and she had had the choice between two of them: Chase and one Mark del Figgalo, back then boyfriend of Quinn Pensky. Chase was the safe bet, as Quinn had already pronounced death threats against girls mistakingly coming too close to Mark, including their common friend Nicole Bristow.[2:13]

Zoey had even encouraged Lola to date Chase, after all, but she had started turning jealous, just like in the case of Trisha Kirby. But Chase lacked the guts to bring it on for real as Lola had been a friend of Zoey, thus it had seemed to be so wrong. Chase needed to choose a girl unknown to Zoey in order to provoke her jealousy.

After the following summer break, Lola had hired her busty cousin Trinidad Vega[2:14] as a fake girlfriend for Chase, and they even had got Quinn's support. The latter had even added some spice to it by suggesting that "Rebecca" alias Trinidad should threaten Zoey's life in the case of ever getting too close to Chase again. This perfect farce was premiered in front of Zoey's eyes at the start of the academic year, ennding with Chase's dramatic breakup with "Rebecca" — as Chase called Trinidad in this cheap comedy, as a heroic proof of Chase's loyalty for Zoey.

Zoey had swallowed the bait, but not the way Chase and Lola had planned it. She had insisted in being just friends with Chase, no matter what.

Much later, Chase and Zoey had turned into a couple, though, but this harmonic idyll had only lasted for ten common days of the summer break.

At the beginning of their senior year, Zoey started arguing with Quinn because of me, and in that process, Quinn had unintentially mentioned how she and Lola had helped Chase to make my sister jealous, and that the blond Mary Sue owed her happiness all to her room pals because without them, she would never have seen the light. And knowing about all the deliberate jealousy drama, Zoey had become infuriated and trashed Chase, as well as started to shun the Hollywood diva and the nerd girl. She even moved into a different dormitory room, becoming the room mate of aforementioned unpopular Stacey Dillsen.

Zoey would have tried to forgive Chase, but now it stung the other way round:

Vengeful Lola Martinez had told Chase about James Garrett, a tall blond rake with whom Zoey had been cheating on Chase during his absence, and this news had been the final nail to close the tomb of the relationship between Zoey and Chase — R.I.P!

I never trusted James although he appeared all nice and innocent, but I remembered having him seen on the campus before where he had hit on Stacey,[2:15] and Melanie Puckett even remembered that creep from her former school, Ridgeway, According to some hardcore viewers of Carly's web show even before I had heard about it for the first time, James had already been Carly's love interest at Ridgeway and appeared on the web show. I would get this confirmed later on when viewing some archived clips, and indeed, this Jake Crandell[2:16] from Ridgeway was no other person than James Garrett. The thought of the same guy making out with my crush and with my sister gave me totally the creeps, but I had to go through it.

Chase might even have forgiven Zoey having cheated on him with James, but not another treason of a much worse sort to be mentioned below.

* * *

**2.6 Crossfire**

All this above indicated that the situation of my sister's former clique was now esentially that of a battlefield, with Zoey against everyone else, and I was sometimes standing in the crossfire, although I tried basically to stick up for my blood relative as often as possible. Honestly, Zoey's demeanour had started to scare me, and I was not sure whether it would have been a good idea to trust her with my discovery of the ancient book in our library. Had I trusted her, I would not have cionsulted someone like Fire Wire or any other nerd behind her back, well aware of the fact that I was but opening yet another can of huge worms.

As this was senior year, Zoey was very much worried about things to come after her graduation, such as college and stuff. But there was also senior prom, and the blond Mary Sue would be ashmed to death if she had to go there alone. Unfortunately, she had messed it up completely with just any boy of her age at Pacific Coast Academy because of her uncompromising rigor. Also, Zoey was torn between a straightforward corporate career as a business or law school graduate, as desired by our parents, and a groovy artists's career, as I hoped secretly inspite of our parents' disapproval. Zoey was — beyond any doubt — gifted for either choice. But she would have to do something soon before she losing valuable time.

Alas, I started feeling more and more uncomfortable due to this situation. Sooner or later, hell would break loose.

* * *

**Chapter 3 Consuela**

* * *

**3.1 Greek**

So, here I was again in the library, not only in order to check whether my preciosu discovery had been still around, but also in order to look up some primer for the Greek language. Unfortunately, the ancient languages had fallen out of favour in the modern times, although there were occasionally classes for Latin at Pacific Coast Academy, given by a Catholic nun or so, but the students usually slept through those classes. Spanish and French were way more popular.

So, there was a book … but was it what I was looking for? There was so many Greek letters in it that I was not really able make sense of it, but I should hardly have expected anything different in a textbook for the Greek language, should I? Well, some things were better learned with the help of a guiding teacher, it seemed, and the Greek language was among those.

In any case, my hopes of reading the old manuscript by looking up word for word in a textbook was so going awry …

Alas, maybe, just in case Megan would provide less useful than expected, I would just have to ask a Catholic priest, as they were sure able to understand old Greek as well, given that the _New Testament_ was written in that language. Wait, the **New** _Testament_ was written in **ancient** Greek? That did not make much sense, did it?

There were regularly sunday services on our campus, and Zoey forced me to visit them.

Most of the time, Father Maccurdy was in charge with these celebrations. He was easy to make out as the world's fattest priest and had made it for this to the cover of the infamous _Jona__'__s Book Of Records_. I remembered sadly that the web show of Carly had once failed beating the record for the longest web session of all, and I hoped that they tried it again. But at least Carly's brother Spencer had established a record for one of his sculptures. He was an excessively gifted freelance artist, as even acknowledged by our art teacher Harold Joiner.[3:1]

* * *

**3.2 Chain Letter**

Now it was time for yet another session of Carly's web show, and it was a very important one.

Shane Diamond had not been heard of again since last time, and, according to Melanie, he had fallen through some empty elevator hole.

That sounded really tragical, and it was probably an admonition for any boy not to get between Carly and Sam, or else … well, poor Shane!

As much as I had envied him for being Carly's boyfriend, I was now sad for his bad accident.

But Melanie let slip a few hints insinuating that it had maybe not exactly been an acccident, and Sam had deliberately made Shane believe that the elevator had been fully functional before Shane stepped into it and … bang!

I was consternated because I had never seen Trisha alias Samantha as deliberately violent, only plain mean and perverse, albeit bearable in Carly's company. The thought of having dated a murderess for several days straight now instilled my mind with all sorts of creepy thoughts.

More than anything else, it was now important that Zoey would never come to hear of these kind of speculations, for otherwise, she would definitely not allow me to watch Carly's web show any longer, due to her increased hatred against the co-moderator, and then I would not see Carly again, which would have broken my heart into smithereens.

Anyways, during the summer break, I had sent an anonymous request to the web show, asking for Carly to poke her tongue into the web cam, and today, the sweetest girl of Seattle actually decided to do so, amking me completely excited.

Carly's tongue was warnm, pink, and smooth, perfect for kisses … oops, I was once more carried away too much by my thoughts. Actually I had got the idea from Chase.

Two years ago, Zoey had been working as a bayw watch and saved some woman from drowning. She had to breathe her from mouth to mouth, getting her tongue bit. Upon seeing her tiongue, Chase remarked that the latter was small.

And my roomie Jack had got that stupid idea that girls with big tongues were better kissers, well, maybe it was not that stupid, no, it definitely was.

OK, that went definitely too far, right?

Anyways, they seemed to be concerned about a chain letter coursing at the schools of Seattle, _Consuela__'__s Evil Revenge_. Fredward had received one and was not willing to answer, as he refused to believe in curses and maledictions, as opposed to Carly who feared the worst for it. I was with Carly, of cours, as I had already seen horrible and dangerous ghosts on this campus[3:2] …

Fifty years ago, a student named Charles Galloway had run away from the campus of Pacific Coast Academy during the classes of recently retired Mr. Hodgens, and he had died in the barren wastelands of Redstone Gulch. Zoey and her clique had even found his tomb and probably committed some sin, resulting in the ghost of Galloway rising from the tom and hunting them all over the place until they had repented their abomination, whatever it was. My sister had never told me the details as she deemed me too young and the story too grisly, but I knew that there had been spooky things.

But what if there was also a curse destined for those reasing the old manuscript found by me in the library? Was I doomed and lost? I started trembling and shivering all over the place.

* * *

**3.3 Zoey's Crisis**

Having overthrown her former clique, Zoey was now all alone, well, she had got Stacey Dillsen, but only kind of, sort of.

The cotton swab freak was also a big danger for me, because she was a fanatic "Creddier".[3:3]

The fans of the web show were split, at least here at Pacific Coast Academy, into two camps: "Creddiers" and "Seddiers", because they either favoured a relationship of Carly with Fredward or one of Samantha and Fredward.

"Creddiers" were one violent bunch, and they accused everyone with a crush on Carly Shay who happened to be not Fredward Benson a "Creddie Killer" and thus a public nemesis number one. Well, and obviously, I was such a potential victim of their oppressive violence, meaning that Stacey, in the case of finding out, would be going to torture me to death with her cotton swabs.

This was another reason why I was not able to trust Zoey all that much, although she may haave needed it in her upcoming decision.

Mom and dad had made it pretty much clear that they would only support Zoey with a decent career as a corporate lawyer of business manager, but not with something as lofty as a fashion designer or some other form of artist.

Unfortunately, Zoey Brooks had already started looking for contacts with fashion labels, and some of the web sites looked really nice.

A company I would have loved Zoey to work for was Mad Style in New York City, directed by Maximilian Madigan, a very cool and funny boss.

In addition, Zoey was put in charge with creationg the outfits for the senior prom, and for the first time since coeducation, it would be a themed prom, rthe topic being the history of California. Zoey was very eager on trying to recreate the style of the time of the establishment of this region as a state of the USA, albeit in a refreshingly modern and fashionable manner, which was by no means an easy task and underlined her great gifts. But she had got qualms going against mom's and dad's wishes, let alone the monetary issues.

* * *

**3.4 Betrayed Friendship**

As you have seen, my sister was suffering a lot from the obliteration of her clique, but others were now equally isolated.

One of them was Michael Barret, former room mate and best friend of Chase Bartholomew Matthews for six years. But their friendship was now shattered amd burst into smithereens.

There had been two reasons for this change of mind within just a few days, and I am about to lay them out subsequently.

The first of them was Zoey's aforementioned short-lived and dirty affair with James Garrett about which Chase had only come to know after the summer break. But from a good friend like Michael Barret,the Bushy had would have exprected a lot more:

* * *

I was away for half a year. In this time, Zoey and James were doing God knows what, but how have I come to here about it?

Not from my best friend Michael Barret as soon as possible, but from Lola and Quinn in a vengeful action against the blond Mary Sue.

No, I have expected even a lot better from Michael than keeping it all for himself, I have expected him to alert me in time about the cheating, but also to do everything in order to prevent them from becoming a couple oir to tear them apart, but not to become one of James's friends and to hang out with him. Sorry, I don't need a friend like that.

* * *

But this was just a minor issue for which Chase was feeling betrayed by his best friend, compared to the major assault on their friendship which involved another boy of this school: Vincent Blake, the elder brother of my aforementioned class mate Ashley.

Two years ago, Vince Blake had beaten up Chase and his friends Logan, Michael, and Mark del Figgalo badly, hetting expelled from PCA for that. A year thereafter, he got readmitted because the school shrink, Marty Klemish,[3:4] deemed him thoroughly reformed. At first glance, Chase's friends had been hostile to the situation, but they fell one by one and befriended with Vince. Lola Martinez had been the first to drop like a dead fly , and she was now even engaged to Vincent Blake, something Chase would never forgive. Quinn, Zoey, Mark, Logan, and Michael had joined the same movement not much later, and this was, by the way, another flea breaking the elephant's back of Chase's formerly monumental love for Zoey.

So, now Chase was done with all of his former friends, maybe for good, maybe not — at least I was not able to tell.

* * *

**3.5 The Quarterback**

But why had football jock Vincent Blake turned violent against Chase in the first place? Well, this was another story, and you need to know about the recent development of our football team.

For most of its history, Pacific Coast Academy had been an academy reserved for boys, and our owner, Mr. Bradford,[3:5] had aleways been and still was coeducation. But the school's board of sponsors and alumni had come to sharing a different opinion. Bradford was still feeling backstabbed by some of its members, most notably from the family of his wife.

The reasons for this had been the previous decline of the school's athletic teams, especially the football squad, notoriously weak in decades.

Then the sponsors had found out that the most successful football teams of the county, such as James K. Polk, Brewster, Silver Springs, and Lakewood, and even more from other parts of California, especially Dimsdale,[3:6], had got no bigger talents and bno bettertraining facilities, but they had got a functional and motivated cheerleading squad.

Although cheerleading at American schools had started out as a boys' business, the last decades had changed the trend and made it look like an all-girls business. Boys as cheerleaders were generally considered uncool and branded as gay or weird, so it had been very hard to recruit them here. Of course a school only for boys had not got the possibility of recruiting cheerio girls from its own ranks.

There had been a partial workaround, consisting in hiring cheerios from neighbouring schools, and this had been practised even during our first two years of coeducation when girls had still been a definite minority. But those guest cheerios had been changing a lot from match to match, as they had had their obligations within their own schools, colleges, or clubs, and they had not been able to be integrated in our pep rallies and other bonding events, and their fascilities for common training had been zilch.

Only the third year of education had allowed us to do without hired cheerios, and this had turned out as a quantum leap in the history of our athletic teams, especially football. The squad included girls like Melanie Puckett and Miranda Franklin alias "Makeout Mandy".[3:7] Zoey was, by the way, the designer of the cheerio uniforms.

Vincent Blake had been our first choice quarterback already as a freshman — something very rare in our history, as football players used to have to work their way up. And as a successful football star, he had not just got the hearts of the girls here, but also certain privileges such as skipping curricular classes in order to concentrate on training for football matches, and — of course — the matches themselves. So as a sophomore, he ha lead our football squad successfully into the playoffs for the Californian state champonship for high school football.

But our school had got strict requirements for granting the privileges, especially suffient markks in the academic subjects. In order to meet with these conditions, many of the jocks had been forced to go through tutoring whiuch was time-consuming and conflicting with their training activities.

Thus Vince Blake had simply taken a shortcut and cheated a lot in tests, which was going well and probably known to and tolerated by many of his fellow students, if not even supported to quite some degree, as everyone was enthusiastic about the success of the football team and was dreaming about the greatest victory in the history of football at Pacific Coast Academy.

But one bushy dweeb did not think this to be right, and upon catching the celebrated quarterback redhanded while filming the teacher's answrs of an upcoming test in history, he decided to intervene and denounce the jock to Dean Rivers, getting him suspended right before one of the most important matches. Needless to say, this treason of some sorts had not been taken well by a certain bully jock and his no less brute henchmen, resulting in aforementioned onslaught on Chase's life. His friends had just been coinvolved, but beaten badly as well, resulting in aforementioned expulsion of the reckless captain of the football team.

* * *

**3.6 The Biggest Traitor**

Ashley Blake, as the little sister of Vince, had never taken Chase's treason very well, although the bushy dweeb had written some screen plays especially for her career when she was stuck in the gap between child acting and teenage acting. The diva had made it to the screen because of good relationships of her father with Arthur Griffin, an important sponsor in the Hollywood business. She had never taken real acting classes and thus not gone through the old school. Shakespeare's drama, the bread and butter of the training of most of the Enhlish speaking actors since ages, were fairly unbeknownst to her, and she deemed them obsolete, unlike Lola who has grown into the business by portraying Juliet and other classic female main rôles. Ashley expected that dramas were written for the sake of her own career. She was still up to using his screen plays, but going to credit her director Dale Squires.[3:8]

OK, the family bonds between these sibligs were very strong, although this had not been the case before their life at Pacific Coast Academy. Vince had become his sister's body guard after the expulsion of wardrobe-sized Hector,[3:9] who had once stuffed sleeping Ashley in a trash bin in order, for not good reason at all. During the year of Vincent's expulsion, a certain Sarah Kyla[3:10] had taken over the the job of Ashley's body guard, but teh diva had been glad to have finally Vince back.

During the bully jock's absence, Ashley had kept on talking about his impending return, and how he will make the traitors, videlicet Chase and his friends, but in particularly the bushy dork, pay as dearly for their unforgivable treason as can be. She had not said so, but with hindsight it appeared to me that she had been pulling the strings, teaching Vince enough acting kills to fool their parents, shrink Klemish, and Dean Rivers into believing in Vince's inoffensiveness, and come up with a subtle plot of revenge aginst the clique, not by letting Vince beat them up again, which woould just have resulted in a new expulsion and probably the end of this dreams of a football scholarship even at some rural county college, but by sowing disharmony into Zoey's clique, with the result of insulating Chase from his friends. Yeah, the starlet had picked her means and her plot just fine — apparently.

So, given the importance of Chase Bartholomew Matthews for the career of Ashley Blake, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to consider Ashley Blake as the big traitor, on a level with Benedict Arnold and similar, rather than Chase Matthews?

* * *

**3.7 Wanted**

Yet another episode of our favourite web show started appearing on the big plasma screen in our lounge, and we were assembled already and had been fighting over the best place. By this week, there was already some sort oof established hierarch, but the arrival of new fans of the web show, some of them being very important students here, was always a challenge for us long-term aficionados.

Carly and Sam made an important announce, wanting our help for looking for someone named Sasha Striker,[3:11] a renowned video gamer of some sort.

More precisely, Sasha was holding the record in the ancient arcade game _PakRats_, played even before our birth.

The very reason for this request was Carly' brother Spencer , who had fallen addicted to this video game and was now even neglecting his customers, especially a rich bald-headed creep who had ordered a sculpture of some rare brood of dogs. The work was due upon the looming birthday of the client's hysterical wife and meant a lot of bucks for the hungry artist. Maybe an encounter with the master of the rats would have cured him.

Sasha Striker had not been heard of in a few years, so it was not clear where she would be found.

I was reminded of a former obsession of mine with one of those modern space invasion arcade games. I had once almost struck level 100 and hits the school's high score, but then a power failure destroyed all my hopes,[3:12] leaving me in a really stinky mood for several weeks straight.

Maybe Sasha was also a master of that video game, and ready to show up here, and to teach me to play better and better?

Ouch, I had pronmised unto Zoey to desist from playing video games like an addict, and that sucked.

But that action had raised some other idea of mine. I was still looking for someone able to make sense of the ancient manuscript in the library, and Megan had nit yet showed up, for a reason I would come to know a bit later. So, in order to find an expert, and the best would be Miles Brody, I was now thinking about using the web show as a sort of a bulletin board. Alas, I was not sure whether the clique of the show would take anonymous requests, and I did definitely not want to come out with my name for a variety of reasons. But without my name or address, how would it be possible for Fredward Benson (or whoever was in charge) to contact me back and submit the result of the research?

* * *

**3.8 Megan's Ban**

Megan Parker would have liked to show up in person at Pacific Coast Academy and have taken a look at the document in question, but she was not allowed to, more precisely, the school administration had banned her from ever setting a foot onto our campus. But she was excessively interested in ancient finds, not just in sponges. Really, thse were just a codeword for her actual activity, inspired by some cartoon featuring a totally stupid and perverse yellow sponge.[3:13] Megan liked to compare that creature and his best pal, a pink starfish, with Drake and Joshuah, or, as she called them, "the boobs".

Carly's alike-looking cousin had indeed already been once on this campus, but using a fake identity: Paige Howard.[3:14] This fact had already made a few kids here moan when watching the web show for the first time. I had been absent back then due to some camping trip with the rest of the middle school kids and with Coco Wexler, the dormitory adviser of the girls at Pacific Coast Academy, and thus not run into her. Megan alias Paige was presenting some machine she had pretended to invent, a total hell machine able to convert cosmic powers, or some sort of that stuff. The demonstration had been flawed and almost blown up the campus.

The real inventor of the horror engine was Melinda Crenshaw, Megan's on and off future step sister in law, or something like that. Megan reported via electronic mail:

* * *

Four years ago, Mindy had tried to get Drake framed fmomr one of her misdeeds, an onslaught upon the property of Linda Hayfer, the most perverse and disgusting teacher of our school, Belleview.[3:15]

Thereupon she enrolled at Pacific Coast Academy, using a fake name, Anastasia.[3:16] and started annoying your fellow students.

She was especially mad at your sister, because she was a great fan of Drake and had recently organised a concert of this boob at your school.[3:17] Therefore, she copied one of her greatest works of art, a wonderful backpack design, and made money of it by selling cheap copies at the campus' convenience store.

Mindy was caught later on and then expelled from your school. But she has never given up on plans of example, she has sold copies of the backpacks at James K. Polk and made there even more bucks. But that was not enough.

Two years ago, she had won the national science fair, using a fake name: Paige Howard, This was necessary because two expulsions from high school were not much of a positive recommendation for a national contest, were they? And as the winner, she was invited to several schools in order to present her invention, the cosmic power converter.

Your school was among those institutions, but there was the problem that she would have been recognised by the students and staff as the good olf backpack plagiariser. Alas, there was a great chance to get back at Zoey ad her gang, especially Quinn Pensky, the only girl whose competition Mindy had ever feared.

Truth said, Mindy had already sabotaged Quinn's botanic experiemnts during her visit at your school, but she was unable to complete her mission of frustrating your geek queen because of getting expelled by Zoey Brooks.

Thus Mindy asked me to show up here and present her invention, and I agreed, not knowing what a hell of a machine it was.

I had got a microchip stuck in my ears, allowing Mindy to give me remote instructions. This systen has been invented years ago by your resident nerd Wayne Gilbert alias Fire Wire, and I had even used it in order to snoop the boobs, but I have also once tried to help Drake impressing a girl with his non-existent knowledge,[3:18] that is … really with Josh's knowledge …

During the demonstration I noticed some things going on not so well, but then it was already too late, and without Quinn's intervention none of us would have come to live to tell. And the latter was not a given, as my remarks, instigated by Mindy, had hurt Quinn's feelings and her self-esteem very badly.

I did not want to blow up anything, but for Dean Rivers, this made no difference. Last year, Josh forced me to fess up to my misdeed, whence Dean Rivers and Officer Vega from the Los Angeles County police have ordered me to stay away from the Pacific Coast Academy campus for at least five miles.

* * *

I shivered a bit, because I had never expected that an alike-looking cousin of supersweet Carly Shay was likely to be a vicious prankster and henchman of someone as supermean as Mindy Crenshaw, also known as "the Creature".

So, Megan was not able to make it up to here, unless resorting to yet another trick and cheat … and that was a bit too risky to request from her. On the other hand, she was about to send us her fianc  
e Tyler Pearson.[3:19]

I did not know whatever this would be worth, but I had to grab any straw I could.

* * *

**3.9 Samantha's Evil Revenge**

The next day, I recieved a letter, which was easy to identify as a letter from Samantha Puckett, a chain letter of the "Consuela" sort, threatening that all sorts of evils would befall me unless I participated in this stupid endless crap. Of course she had known my address, and she was probably using this in order to get back at my sister for having expelled her from Pacific Coast Academy.

I did not know what to do but to show the letter to Zoey. Bit was she really able to protect me in any way from Consuela and her pernicious revenge in the case of not forwarding the chain letter?

Wayne Gilbert explained that the addresses of anonymous accessors to _Splash Face_ accounts was logges, and this had enabled Samantha Puckett to identify me after having sent a request for finding Miles Brody.

Maybe this was already the start of the punishment for having messed with ancient scrolls … private letters of people long dead, and now disturbed in their tombs, making their restless soul come for me.

* * *

**Chapter 4 No More Carly's Web Show**

* * *

**4.1 Tyler At PCA**

Finally, Tyler Pearson showed up at Pacific Coast Academy, he was even younger than us and already looked totally schemish, little wonder prankster queen Megan was into him, but that was a long story.

Two years ago, Tyler had been Megan's assistant prankster, but then he had started having feelings for her, and she had not beenhappy about that. The reason was Megan was already dating a certain guy who had provided her with Japanese candy, soething very hard to get at in San Diego.[4:1]

Remembering my addiction to gummi wors, I was definitely not someone allowed to rebuke Megan for that obsession.

But Corey — said candyman — had already been dating another girl at the same time, a certain Monica Chance,[4:2] as had been found out by Drake and Josh.

Megan had been little pleased and of course trashed the filthy creep, but her feelings were still hurt for that. She had especially regretted having rejected Tyler for such a bastard, and, fporthunately, the young prankster star, had been forgiven Megan's perverse mistake.

We greeted him on our campus, and, although he was already fairly familiar with the locations from Megan's endless stories, we showed him around. He talked about many a prank we should have pulled on excessively evil teachers such Hodgens. Now there was some idea, but Zoey would probably not have liked me to get myself again into troubles by stuff like that.

Two years ago, I had stuck my arm into the ejection slot of a candy vending machine in order to fetch a bar for Lola who had paid for somethiong, but obtained nothing in return. Well, I had not been able to withdraw my cornered limb any longer, only thirty hours later, and I still feel the pain.[4:3] That's what I had got for trying to impress girls, ouch! It was like an anathema, worse than the evil curse of consuela, about which I had naver hurt again in the web show. Anyways, Quinn and Lola had been able to hide me in Chase's dormitory room, preventing me to get caught by Vice Principal Thatcher, who had already threatened to punish me severely in the case of making any triouble like swimming in the campus fountain.

Before the trouble with the vendor machine, I had already broken the nose of Dean Rivers. Along with Jack and a few pals, I had played around with a new miniature plane, and the thing had been a bit buggy. I had asked Quinn to repair it, and she had accepted this, but what she had actualy done was disabling the servo navigation for the sake of the propulsion. I had not been able to steer the plane any longer, hell, I had not even been able to see its desitnation, until we heard the principal's scream, … too late! Fortunately, I had never been caught and punished for this, otherwise I would have been suspended, expelled, deported to Siberia …

OK, so I had been qute a biot of a troublemaker already, inspite of having been lucky enough to not get caught, but with the possible curse for not forwarding the chain letter, the afirementioned mishaps would certainly get reveiled and get e thrown into the dungeons beneath the dark keep of doom … or something eve worse!

Tyler had been so easily getting away with everything, though, so it was better for him to pull the pranks on Thatcher and Hodgins …

* * *

**4.2 The Codex**

Tyler had not got a library card for our school library, but he was able to visit temporarily with and identity declaration and his own student's identity card from Belleview. He was thoroiughly impressed by the size of our library, as that at Belleview was really lousy, and students were usually referred to their own community centre's library which was often a few miles away from their homes and hard to access outside class times.

The bookshelf in front of the alcove was still as before when I had left it last time. This was probably because the books in this block of shelveshad been very rarely read. We needed a rickety ladder in order to get to the alcove without having to shove away too many books.

Tyler's eyes bugged out when he discovered the manuscript that was a leather-bound codex of scrolls, a form of books used in the late antique era. Then he spotted the writings, but he was disappointed, which he explained, "yes, these letters are certainly a variant of Greek script, but the test makes no sense in Greek, it has to be either some completely different language, not just a dialect, or cryptographic stuff I can't make sense of. As of today, the Latin script is used for such a huge variety of unrelated languages … you catch the draft, I am sure."

Tyler was probably so right, and just recognising the letters did by no means imply anything near being capable of understanding a text or even reading it appropriately. On the one hand, I was bitterly disappointed, as I had really hoped Megan's boyfriend to be able to decipher my discoveries. On the other hand, I smelled a lot of more adventures to come, but would it be really worth it? Maybe I was already struck by a pernicious curse just from finding the scribbles and touching them, so it did not matter any more and I would as well have picked the option of trying to get someone to make any sense of it.

Tyler had got no further glue, except one thing: "I am sure that the scribbles have got religious or philosophical — maybe magical — content. Some words are definitely of Greek origin, the cultural language of the day — or so it seems — and those have got meanings in the realms of religion and philosophy, especially when used in the context of a foreign language."

I started shivinering at the thought of magical contents, as it made it more likely that reading them was triggering a pernicious anathema of the worst sort.

So, who was I going to consult? The religious context suggested to ask Father MacCurdy, but he was very well acquainted with my sister, and he would certainly have told her about my findings, triggering her intervention. Zoey would not have been keen on my occupation with hidden and possibly dangerous and base things.

My best guess was still Miles Brody, but there was still not much of a chance to contact him, especially not because Samantha Puckett was now aware of the fact that I was a regular viewer of their web show, and she was going to abuse this in order to blackmail me for the purpose of getting back at Zoey.

* * *

**4.3 Samantha's Debts**

Taylor had returned to San Diego, with the promise of discussing the situation with Megan Parker, the result of which operation I was awaiting with increasing anxiety.

We middle school kids were now gathered in our lounge in order to watch yet another episode of our favourite web show, which was — of course — that of Carly Shay, Samantha Puckett, and Fredward Benson.

Of course I was not able to watch my former girlfriend without steadily increasing disgust since I had received her chain letter, but I still loved the show to no end, making it impossible for me to simple refrain from viewing it.

In this episode, Carly reported the fact that Samantha was owing her and Fredward already several hundreds of bucks, more to come on a daily base. And thus Samantha urged us to simply send her some money, to an address at Ridgeway, her school.

Samantha owing hundreds of dollars unto Fredward and Carly was not really much of an issue, she had made quite a few debts here at Pacific Coast Academy as well why she was here, especially borrowing from Melanie. Many kids are stuck in this trap at some point, for the better or worse, including me when I was addicted way too much to certaincandy. On the other hand, I figured the destination of the requested donations a bit fishy, for why did she want us to send the money to Ridgeway? Should I have cared?

I probably would have simply ignored her request, had there not been the problem with the chain letter and Consuela. Samantha was not unlikely to deny any service for me, such as letting me use the web show in order to search for Miles Brody, unless I sent a few bucks in order to relieve her debts, finally, Carly would sooner or later have needed the money, and then I would also have felt infinitely guilty for not giving Sam any money to return to Carly.

There was some kind of a sort of a problem left: I did not have all that much money to spare, did I? It had gone all the way to some candy vendors.

* * *

**4.4 Begging For Bucks**

OK, I knew that this was a bad idea, but I was so desperate that I could not help begging my sister down on my knees for a few bucks. Alas, there was a deep problem, goven that the blond Mary Sue hated Sam and would never allow me to help her out, especially not with money that I did not have, and, more than anything else, I was not able to talk about my reasons for helping her out in the first place. But lying deliberately to Zoey, and not just withholding facts and reasons from her, would have been bound for complete failure and have made things even worse, such as denouncing everything to mom and dad and thence force me to leave California in order to go to London, with all its disgustig food and lousy weather. And hoping that Zoey was not going to ask for the reasons would have been really naïve, wouldn't it?"

I tried to come up with some excuses, such as needing money for Japanese cansy. "It tastes **so** yummy!"

Zoey nodded, "I know, but I have told you a gazillion of time to get some job, but don't even dare to work again for Logan! And doesn't give Kazu it cheaper to those working for him as delivery boys"

I sighed sadly, for Logan had always been treating me like the last bunch of dirt, and Zoey had often been forced to intervene in a more than embarrassing manner, making me look like a much younger kid than I was really. She had tried to get me a job at Kazu's Suchi Rox, but there was already a long list of potential delivery boys, and I was still in the queue. So Zoey just wanted me to wait until then and stay quiet for now. I whimpoered, "OK, it is for an old friend in need." I plastered a pitiful sigh on my face.

Zoey wondered which old friend it was, but she did not ask me aloud. "Let me see what I can do …" But the way she looked betrayed that she was not willing to lend me money for just each and every friend.

I waved and was on my way out when the door opened anyways and Stacey Dillsen marched in, with a cotton swab model in her hands.

She held it aloft and asked curiously: "Hi Zoey, the hosts of mty favourite web show have just asked is for a donation, as one of them is deep in debts, and of course I want to contribute something. So I thought about sending them a cotton swab model Sam can sell. Do you think that this reconstruction of the Taj Mahal in India would be a better choice, or my older miniature reconstruction of the Mayflower ship?"

Honestly, I was pretty sure that neither Carly nor Samantha would be in the slightest pleased about a cotton swab model as a donation, and that it would be incredibly hard to find a customer. Well, there was a chance because Spencer seemed to know people buying all sorts of weird clients, collectors of stuff nno less abstruse than Stacey's works of art, otherwise the hungry artist would have been long since forced to file bankruptcy.

Zoey shrugged when she turned her head around. "Uhm … both of them are … nice?" She looked totally uninterested, saying the least. But then my sis came to think about something. "Dustin, isn't that also your favourite web, show, those freaky kids from Seattle and so on?"

I went pale, as it made absolutely no sense denying it any longer, and I was better looking for a mouse' hole to dig my way through in order to escape from what was going to followq almost immediately and inevidently.

Zoey glared sternly at me, and then she growled, "are you trying to send money to the show moderators? You know that i can't allow you to do this. So, do you …"

The blood had left mey face already half a minute ago, and now I felt Zoey's stern grip at my collar. There was no way out, teh ed was near, and I better said my last prayers, but hopefully not in the presence of a priest which would have been Father MacCurdy, for in this case, I would have inevitably slipped into mentioning my strange discovery in the library.

Until now, Zoey was maybe not even aware of the fact that Sam was really Samantha Puckett alias Trisha Kirby, The last time I had checked my sister had mistaken Sam for a boy's name, and it is certainly not quite unambiguous. Alas, this discovery was not very far away, as sooner or later, Stacey would talk about it, and then Zoey would kick me into the next millennium for beying such a betrayer, willing to pay her archenemy some money, and not just any money, but her bucks. So I was lucky to be allowed to wimp out of Zoey's room for now, without the bucks for Sam, of course, and to hope that she would calm down before discovering that truth.

OK, it had been a very bad idea to even bother Zoey, and I was not daring to ask Logan again. But Ashley Blake was sometimes showing generous, and it would not hurt her, who was up to sending Sam a coupon over fifty bucks, to add my name to the envelope. Alas, her favours used to be not without a hidden hitch.

* * *

**4.5 Claire Sawyer**

The next day, Zoey had apparently found out about the identity of mysterious co-modertor "Sam", probably because Stacey had not been able to keep her lispy mouth shut. In addition, she had already taken some measures and called reinforcement upon the blond devil, as she called my ex-girlfriend. Reaching me in my lounge, the blond Mary Sue was followed by some Afro-American teenage girl and declared: "OK, this is our new family lawyer, Claire Sawyer from James K. Polk High in Santa Clarita. She is in charge with taking care of your interests, should this stupid bastard lass from San Diego ever dare to bother you again, you've got it?"

I nodded reluctantly while shaking the mini-shark's hand. There was no way for me to doubt any longer that Zoey meant serious business and would not hesitate to sue the web cast for abusing me. And just like back in elementary school, her overprotective inventions would most likely leave me embarrassed and the laughingstock of my class mates.

Claire Sawyer explained that it was illegal to ask children under eighteen over public channels for donations without an appropriate recompensation, and as several kids here at Pacific Coast Academy had already sent in some bucks or were close to doing so, Claire and Zoey were already provided with a huge amount of witnesses, enough to get not only the web show, but also, in the case of informing their parents, the administration of Pacific Coast Academy in trouble, sjould the latter do nothing to prevent the kids from watching illegal web shows.

Where was the good old Zoey who had once objected vigorously against censorship, especially here at Pacific Coast Academy? That had been three years ago when Chase and Michael had started a poor excuse of web show here at Pacific Coast Academy, well, it was a poor excuse when compared with Carly's wonderful series of web events, but abiut any other web show sucked as much, too. Chase and Michael had included heated disputes between Zoey and Logan about girl stuff and boy stuff, but the disputes had been carried into our class rooms, forcing Dean Rivers to come down anbd declare Chase's and Michael's show as illegal.[4:4] The web show had been continued as a TV show by a regional broadcasting corporation, _He says — She says_, but only with Zoey and Logan. These minutes on the air had been used by Zoey for nothing but protesting publically against the oppressive censorship performed at Pacific Coast Academy, and she had actually mobilised the masses to demonstrate vigorously against the prohibition.

Well, Chase's and Michael's show had gone down the drain pretty fast ever since, eventhough the prohibition had been cancelled again, as their main interest seemd to be presenting their hand-made cartoons with a few songs inbetween. A few months later, the web site _Toon Juice_ had taken over their cartoons[4:5] and even started paying for that, but this was a wholly different story.

Maybe having broken with Chase had caused Zoey to regret having stuck up for him previously against our Dean, and now she felt urged to make up for it by fighting againts the moral successors of his web show.

Zoey also growled, "I really should not allow you to watch that dirty farce from Seattle any longer. But Stacey has told me that the resrt of the web cast, Fredward and Carly, are very nice people, and they would be such a cute couple, so I don't want to punish them for Samantha's excessive evilness." She sighed deeply.

This may have saved me for the time being, but I fear that Stacey's impact would cause Zoey to become a fanatic "Creddier" and thus hate me to the death once discovering that I was a potential "Creddie Killer". Verily, these prospects were anything but bright and glorious.

* * *

**4.6 Fudge Balls**

The call for donations had been illegal indeed. Sam had been caught for this crime by their principal Ted Franklin, after all a much more pleasant fellow than our Dean Carl Rivers who would have sent Samantha to French Guayana for her misdeed, and was now forced to send all of the money back.

But Spencer, a law school dropout, had found a way, found a way around all this, and this consisted in sending the kids fudge balls he had to sell anyways in order to win a bicycle. He was in desperate need of a new one, as he had already used up too many of them for his sculptures and trashed the rest into oblivion by his careless demeanour when riding them, something he shared with hapless Chase Bartholomew Matthews.

This meant that our students here who, unlike hapless me, had sent them some bucks would soon be awarded with some excessively delicious almond chocolote fudge … yummy! But I would be left with nothing.

Zoey left it there, but she did not want to here any other report telling her that Samantha was doing something in the show that had got a bad influence on me, or else there would be an astronomical amount of havoc to be wreaked.

I did not exactly know about what sort of consequences Zoey was thinking, but they would be by absolutely no means pleasant for me, so much was sure.

And any chance of getting to hear about Miles Brody was now drifting further down the drain.

* * *

**4.7 Exploding Muffins**

Now it was time for yet another session, and I was already watching with the growing fear that Samantha would do something bad, and then Zoey would not allow me to watch this show any longer, just as threateed. And the worst thing seemed to come true:

Carly, Freddie and Sam had hidden an exploding muffin in a basket with other cakes of that type, and they put the |gift" onyto the desk of Lewbert, the ugly and annoying deskman of Bushwell Plaza. The latter was the house where Carly and Freddie lived in, and it was in a miserable state due to the messiness of Lewbert, characterised by a huge wart in his face which he had always refused to get removed or covered.

When Samantha had been with me at Pacific Coast Academy, we had often thrown muffins at bypassing teahcers, especially those filled with jam or other sticky masses that splashed all over the victim's suits. Zoey had thereupon washed my head in the most thorough manner, and I had to crawl on my knees in order to beg them for forgivenness.

Now the creep started fumbling with the unanticipated gift from a source unbeknownst unto him, and … bang! Scraps were flying, Lewbert was pushed across the lobby by the impact of the detonation. The warthog was now lying helpless on the floor, cringing and whimpering like a wounded baby.

A few minutes later, the paramedics arrived at the speed of light in order to transport the mutilated victim to nearby St. Schneider's hospital, [4:6] where aforementioned Shane Diamond was still lying in a comatose state, something I would only come to hear about months later. Lewbert was especially missing his wart and requested it to be reattached to his face in the hospital.

Spencer was going to take over Lewbert's job during his absence, while Carly, Fredward, and Samantha were forced by Fredward's mother to care for the crippled doorman.

Regardless of the details to come, it was now pretty clear that my sister would not be willing to tolerate this interweb violence any longer and most likely force me to desist from watching it. That was so infinitely sad, but there was not much to do about it.

Of course there was theoretically some chance left that Zoey would not come to hear about this session and its brute contents, but this possibility was really low and naïve to clinge to as a last anchor. I could not even trust my friends there, as I had been forced to experience three years ago. Zoey had come to hear about my dates with Samantha alias Trisha from no other than my so-called best pals, videlicet aforementioned Jacob Ross and some Maximilian Tebbe,[4:7] who was no longer a student here at Pacific Coast Academy. Two years ago, Robbie had replaced him as my room mate. I would not have forgiven that pernicious betrayal, had not my relationship with the blond devil come to a premature end due to her thoroughly adulterous demeanour.

* * *

**4.8 Zoey's Wrath**

And indeed, Zoey Brooks had come to here about this disastrous episode, and she was certainly not in a decent mood when she stumbled into my dormitory room in order to pronounce what I had already been anticipating.

I guessed that Stacey had been the one to tell my sister about the accident, but this did not really matter, as Zoey found some other proof for Samantha's bad influence on me, and this was the chain latter about Consuela's pernicious curse in which she threatened me. And Robbie had even helped her finding it, for, when she asked me about any contact I still had with the blond monster, he had pointed her to the letter. Bang! Zoey almost exploded for anger when she read the writing that I had tried so hard to keep away from her, but apparently for no avail.

She was now immediately taking her cellular phone and inform Claire Sawyer about the activities. Our future lawyer was told to write a petition for the board of Pacific Coast Academy, under the direction of executive chairman Garth Burman,[4:8] with the intention of getting the web show banned throughout the campus.

Something Zoey's eyes told me that she was not going to stoip there, but that she was also up to informing a certain David Alejandro Vega[4:9] for further measures, as this web show, with Samantha Puckett as the co-moderator, was a danger for all middle school kids along the west coast, if not a national catastrophe of the highest priority.

From this I concluded that David Alejandro Vega was some sort of an FBI or CIA agent, or maybe a governmental spy, if not something even more important.

OK, Samantha may have deserved some punishment, but Carly was co-involved, and the cops would hardly leave her in peace, especially when my sweetie jumped to her best friend's defense, as was to be expected.

* * *

**4.9 News From Megan**

I was of coure exactly the contrary of happy about the turn things had already taken, and about the measures Zoey was planning to get enforced here at Pacific Coast Academy and elsewhere, throughout the country, throughout the world.

In this depression, a mail from Tyler Pearson reached me. The red haired gnome was informing me aboiut the already announced conversation with Megan, and Carly's cousin had suggested that, in the case of the text being a pagical scroll from the times of the Roman empire, the best address to ask for was her witchcraft teacher Kreuftlva Klotz[4:10] from New York City.

Hells bells, what sort of a named was "Kreuftlva"? I was not really able to make much sense of it, not more than of the scrolls hidden in the library, anyways. Maybe I would need Kreuftlva's magical abilities in order to make sense of her name … oops, that would have been fun.

But New York City was so far, far away, across the continent. On the other hand, it was the American stronghold of fashion labels, so I would have to arrange it that Zoey made it there for an interview at some of the big labels — I hoped for Mad Style — and allow me to accompany me there. But meeting a witch would be hard to justify, wouldn't it?

Megan also suggested her mail friend Malika Ritter[4:11] from Seattle, a student at the same school as Carly, Fredward, and Samantha. Unfortunately, Seattle was not around the corner either, and Zoey would not take me there as long as she would live, but with someone like Malika I would still stay in contact with Ridgeway and maybe Carly, even in the more and more likely case of the show getting canceled here at Pacific Coast Academy and even elsewhere because of its huge amount of violence and threats.

Anyways, Megan had implicitely and casually admitted to being a student of witchcraft, something unbeknownst to me before. Was this supposed to scare me in some way or another?

* * *

**4.10 Censored**

Garth Burman had read the petition, and he wanted to submit the issue to a thorough discussion among the students, members, and staff of Pacific Coast Academy before coming to a decision that would have been the first in the history of this illustrious porep school, and a case of presedence for so many others, the blackening out of a third party interweb site on the whole school's intraweb and of course the prohibition of watching it by other means, such as via satellites over mobile devices.

Such a control would of course not be easy to establish, but if necessary, the school's board would by no means hesitate jumping through burning hoops.

Dean Rivers was less patient, and he ordered the blocking of the interweb address of Carly's show on site. Quinn Pensky, the responsible administrator for the intraweb, was told to start imediately, but, due to her recent severe discords with my sister, she was by no means willing to do so. She hoped somewhat that the financial status of Logan Reese's father, the emperor of Hollywood, would allow him to dissuade Dean Rivers and to await the decision of the board. This was a really daring assumption, though, and she risked getting expelled from Pacific Coast Academy weeks before graduating and left with a remark in her folder making it impossible to get into any decent college. But maybe she was no longer interested in a scientific career and content with the life as a wife of a gazillionary coxcomb?

* * *

**Chapter 5 Pernicious Sam**

* * *

**5.1 Officer Vega**

Little later, Zoey took me to some office of Los Angeles Police Headquarters near Hollywood, and she introduced me to some officer named David Alejandro Vega, the samne person she had contacted recently in order to enforce measures against Samantha Puckett.

And, inded, the national security department had been observing the blond devil for several years already because of the connections of her father to some international gang of organised criminals, known under names like "Maffia", "Cosa Nostra", "Triads", and stuff like that.

Officially, Mr. Puckett had disappeeared many years ago, but there had always been hints that he was just hiding, and that Samantha had got contact with him, if not directly than by means of middlemen of some sort.

Since my date with Samantha on the campus of Pacific Coast Academy, Zoey was cooperating actively with the unit that was in charge with the investigation, a group including officer Vega. The latter had already been at Pacific Coast Academy, investigating undercover. His disguise had been that of one André Chaumont, so-called husband of Monique Chaumont from some boarding school in the outskirts of Paris. In a few days, Officer Vega would go to Seattle for even closer undercover examinations, although he was not going to tell us the details that were — of course — cop secrets.

The onslaught on aforementioned Lewbert was now another thing, albeit it was unintentional — or so Carly claimed. But my caring elder sister was of a different opinion, as she wsupposed that Sam was by all means capable of planning the attempt upon somebody's life and tarnishing it as an accident, at least when commanded by some string puller from the scene of organised crime.

According to the research of Officer Vega, Lewbert had been a former member of the gang of Samantha's uncle Carminem[5:1] a man who abused a charity label for the purpose of money laundering. Said organisation had concerted a charity walkathlon during the last year, here at Pacific Coast Academy, and intimidated Lola Martinez. Somehow, the creeps must have figured that Zoey was a dangerous Mary Sue, and this had caused them to let Zoey off the hook in order to avoid provoking more trouble and getting caught by the police of Los Angeles.

But Zoey was still collecting more proofs for her otherwise outrageous claims, and she would certainly not stop until the last nickel was paid back …

* * *

**5.2 Back To The Pageants**

Surprisingly, Quinn Pensky had been a pageant girl before going to school, a fact that she had been hiding unto us for the longest time, until an old acuaintance had turned up here to derive her former passion, a certain Sarah Kyla,[5:2] who had been the body guard of Ashley Blake after the expulsion of her brother Vince. At the age of seven, Quinn had come to see the light and envisioned her metal domination of mankind, a goal she had aappearemtly abandoned by starting to date the dumbest of all students at Pacific Coast Academy, alias Logan Reese. But now she was about to return to the pageants.

Indeed, Logan had talked her into doing so, as otherwise Quinn would never have lowered herself into such a stupidity. He had already once organised a pageant on our campus, which had been an extreme failure, and now he wanted to organise another one, with Quinn as the pre-determined winner, or so I figured it.

I do not want to say that all pageant girls are stupid wenches, just the vast majority of them … Lola looks like a typical example, she would have done anything for more public attention, anyways.

Really, I tried to avoid any contact with the coxcomb and his concubine, but they had become an inevitable public issue here at Pacific Coast Academy, more so from day to day.

Jeremiah Trottman, the chief reporter of the local TV network, had seen his quota drop like a concrete block when Carly's web show had iincreased its popularity. As a consequence, he had started looking for more attractive news. Stacey's cotton swab art were apparently not interesting enough for him, ditto the new tapestry of the administration offices, so he had opened a segment about the erotic relationships between the students, teachers, and staff at Pacific Coast Academy. And for obvious reason, Quinn and Logan were now the main target of this segment, although Quinn was embarrassed by this increasing amount of public attention.

And although this hitherto increasingly menaceful competition for Trottman's network had been declared illegal by Dean Rivers until some still pending official decision to be made by the executive chairman and the board, the established trend at Pacific Coast Academy was hardly reversible.

Logan's reaction was that of either buying PCA network (of which his father was already a sponsor, more or less) or to make it perish by surpassing it eclatantly with his own broadcasting cotporation, _Dingo Channel_.[5:3]

* * *

**5.3 Strange Mr. Takato**

Kreuftlva, the master witch from New York City, had already answered, but the reply was not exactly encouraging. Due to some recent incidence in Salem, Massachusetts, where a few of her brethren had been killed by the local police, she had to stay in the northeastern corner and fight for her covenant, whatever that was.

Alas, Kreuftlva knew someone able to help here, better tha n anyone else, and this someone was nobody but aforementioned mystery guy Takato, or, as Wayne pu it, Doc Strange. Takato had been her witchcraft master, but like a true master of the arcane arts, Takato did not exist, or he did, but he believed in the equalitu of being and not being, or so it sounded, like all those zen guys that I had never understood.

That was quite some round trip, given that I had started contacting Fire Wire in order to get redirected to Megan Parker, then to Kreuftlva Klotz, and now to Takato, whom I did not even know how to find, given his weird notion of existence, although maybe Wayne Gilbert was even providing helpful here, as he had read a lot in some comics about that Doc Strange.

OK, so what did I really know about Takato? This may be summarised in the following report:

* * *

At the wake of last year's junior prom, Michael Barret wanted to impress his girlfriend Lisa Perkins with a new car, actually an old and used one formerly belonging to his dad, but it was Michael's first permanent car, so he was proud of it.

But there was a huge problem: He had learned riding cars in a modern automatically switching machine and was not accustomed to old-fashion stick switches.

Alas, he could not afford withdrawing from his promise to take his Lisa to the junior prom, as he had disappointed here often enough with his cowardice.

For example, just a few days earlier, he had been forced to admit to being afraid of rollercoasters. And Lisa had forced him to take a ride on the spine twister at nearby Mystic Mountain, otherwise she would have left him. She had not said this directly, but had threatened to cheat on him with a certain Emilia Brandon,[5:4] a girl even younger than me.

Thus Michael forced himself into learning to ride such an outdated vehicle, no matter what it would take. He was not able to handle it all alone, rather, the result of trying to do so was a crash with a tree on the campus.

At the prom itself, Michael was indeed able to ride that car, but he told Lisa and everyoine else about how he had learned it.

A certain elederly Japanese guy, Mr. Takato, had taught him to mix sushi ingredients and to squish grapes with his feet. Takato claimed to be a teacher at Pacific Coast Academy Middle School. But not even I, or Wendy, Robbie, Ashley, Jack, or Millie knew him. I did not care, but many of his friends refused to believe him, especially not his girlfriend Lisa Perkins.

* * *

Ever since, Michael had been going more and more crazy, and he had finally done the one and only right thing and trashed his worthless girlfriend. They had only been together because Michael had saved her from getting run over by a race cart,[5:5] a really stupid excuse for dating.

Even Samantha Puckett knew it better, for she had once been close to dating a certain Noseby Moseby just because he had subscribed hert to some ham programme but changed her mind upon seeing how plain stupid that was.[5:6]

In turn, Lisa had always let doen Michael whenever it came down to it. Where had she been when Michael had been tied to a park bench by our teacher for geography, Kenneth Billiam?[5:7] When he was forced by Stacey Dillseon to help her building a cotton swab pyramid for history classes,[5:8] had he found any support from his girlfriend?

Back to our topic!

We had got nothing but the confused statements of Michael Barret a,d Wayne's comparison with a cartoon hero.

* * *

**5.4 Dingo Channel**

As aforementioned, Logan Reese had started his own channel with his concubine Quinn Pensky as the main star, but of course he also needed sponsors paying for advertising.

Some of them were also sponsors of Pacific Coast Academy, such as Pear, a vendor of mediocre hard and software used in the local intraweb of the school. WE, the students of this institutions, were regularly equipped with a notebook known as Pearbook, as well as with a pearphone, which was sort of a cellular phone. Then there were also pearpods and pearpads. Of course none of them could hold a dimming candle to Quinndoze QP,[5:9] a work by Quinn Pensky from the days when she had still used her brain.

Something similar was the case for the second greatest advertiser in _Dingo Channel_, a softdrink vendor named Blix. Their coloured tape water with a high concentration of industrial sugar and unnatural aromatisers was certainly unable to compete with Frazz,[5:10] a power softdrink by Quinn she had incented over two years ago. I had accidentally driun a whole bottle of it without knowing what it was, but it had tasted all so heavenly and, at the same time, ghad energised me up to thrice my usual level for several days straight. Later, she had toned it down, as it had been a bit too strong, but she could not complete her research on it because dating Logan had reduced her mental reliabaity to at most tem per cent of her usual abilities.

This did not mean that Quinn had stopped completely coming up with new iventions, quite the contrary, but they were now aimed towards a completely different goal. But, as opposed to original activity, which had served the goal of promoting scientific progress, her current efforts were about to target a certain market that Logan wanted to get covered, the market of the potential Dingo viewers.

Many teenagers of the day had got a credit card, usually provided by their parents or guardians for emergency cases but actually used for shopping, and that did not mean buying stuff the kids needed, but stuff they saw advertised in the publicity breaks in TV channels and on the interweb. _Dingo Channel_ was now cooperating with a certain Sky Store[5:11] which sold cute and glittering yet perfectly useless stuff to teenagers paying with aforementioned plastic cards. Most of the products sold by said web and television shop were quick and dirty inventions by Quinn Pensky following the above pattern.

Another brainless invention had been Quinn's techfoots, marketed by Daka Shoes,[5:12] which was of course yet another sponsor of Pacific Coast Academy, and a really greedy one. Originally, Quinn's idea had been a great one, but that was because it had been started prior to her concubinacy with Logan Reese. The latter had made a concentrated work on that footwear impossible, leaving a bugged boot that was a walking danger … oops!

Before Logan's establishment of _Dingo_, Daka had used Carly's web show for the promotion of the most modern but most buggy boots … ever! Fortunately, the show hosts had been discovering in time what a crap they had neen advertising in their web sessions, and they had found a way out of their contract. But of course the shoe house had not given up, and Quinn had suggested Logan's new TV channel as the best solution.

Of course the channel would not have had any audience without a programme, and the idea for this had been delivered by the president of Daka: In order to get back at Carly and their web show, they were just starting to plagiarise from them. Logan had quickly set up a sitcom going as _Totally Terry_ which was a cheap copy of Carly's collected skits.

I did not watch that crappy junk from Logan's channel, and Zoey would certainly not have wanted me to do so. For this avail, it was only possible for me to notice the **not so random** parallels between both shows as on as they happened. But Ashley Blake was watching both, well, she had been watching Carly's show, and she had noticed the similarities but had blamed Carly for plagiarising. I would only come to hear about all that fuss a few weeks later.

But I am still talking about this plagiarism at this point, as it fits nicely into the topic of treason that had been omnipresent at Pacific Coast Academy. The web show's contents had most probably been betrayed by some of its viewers to Logan Reese and _Dingo_, and those traitors were not unlikely here on our campus.

Logan has once deliberately backstabbed Michael and Chase by talking them into plagiarising their cartoons from some TV show, just in order to get them into trouble.[5:13] And now he was the plagiariser par excellence.

Had I known that Logan was about to do that, I would … no, this should not be talked about right here and right now.

Well, the sitcom was only one cornerstone of Logan's programme, there was of course also a news corner, and for this he would have loved to hire Trottman, but the latter freak was refusing to join _Dingo_, which — for Logan Reese's understanding — meant no less than war.

* * *

**5.5 The Return Of Jeffry Norkin**

It was the time of the regional tennis championships, and Jeremiah Trottman was once more the main reporter of our campus TV, providing a complete live broadcast of the event, similar to that of the wrestling championships of two years ago where my sister had been beaten unconscious by Chuck Javers, an event reported live by sadomasochist Trottman.[5:14]

Logan Reese was of course also interested in feeding his viewers with the hottest sports news, live was considered best. He was not really restricted to news at our school, so he was looking for reporters from other parts of Los Angeles in order to completete his team.

During the last years, Zoey had always refrained from watching most tennis matches, but this year, it seemed to be different, even though Chase was participatingg just as during the last years, and these were the first tennis regionals since the resounding breakup between my sister and the bushy dork.

The first turn opponent of Chase Matthews was once more a certain Jeffry Norgin[5:15] from my hometown, and the bushy dweeb was not aware of Norgin's past, for otherwise he would have puked his guts loose.

OK … so, who was Jeffry Norgin really? At middle school, during the last few months before Zoey's switch to Pacific Coast Academy, Jeffry had not only been her class mate, but he had also got a one-sided crush on Zoey, but refrained from hitting on her in a really obnoxious manner as was the case in the relationship between Fredward Benson and Carly Shay, more like in the case of Chase, but Zoey had come to hear about it from some third hand side, and then she even gave in and kissed him, just for pity.

Oh yeah, Chase had been wishing so for so many years, at least as much as Jeffry had done in that one year before Zoey's departure to Pacific Coast Academy. but … bear with it, we all know now that it was finally for naught, although it had been looking so much like a happy end until those ugly revelations had been made.

Zoey appeared to have had remorses all the time because of leaving Jeffry in the dark, making it to Pacific Coast Academywithout letting him know in advance. This was the ultimate reason for which she had been absent from the tennis contests and even refrained from sining up for trials for our team, although she would certainly have made the cut, much better than Chase or anyone else in the team. Zoey was simply unable to face her former friend, if the usage of that word is indeed appropriately describing the thing between my sister and Jeffry from that time. She felt almost like having backstabbed him, and those remorses had made her hide from the guy all the time.

So, why was this year all of a sudden a different matter? It was really weird, wasn't it?

* * *

**5.6 Fallen From The Tree**

I snuck into the cabins of the guests whowere changing into their outfits for the tennis matches. Finding Jeffy was not very hard — or so I believed — because he was the star of the team and certainly entoured by masses of fangirls. But I had been a bit disappointed after having already made several futile attempts of locating him. Was he hiding from Zoey as much as vice versa?

Finally, I was let through to him, and he recognised me although we had never met, and, even though Zoey had talked a lot about me to her class pals back at middle school, it was unlikely that her description of me was still valid, remind you, after five years. I was no longer a subteen, but a pubescent teenager who had at least grown a lot.

And then there was the big surprise: Two years ago, Jeffry had been dating a certain rude blonde, and that happened to be the one and only Samantha Puckett. "When Sam had heard about my former crush on Zoey Brooks, she pushed me from the tree and …"

I was worried about the consequences from the chute, as I still remembered the brute fate of Shane Diamond, but they had not been that bad and still allowed him to play tennis at a very high level.

But this was not the result of a natural recovery from injuries, and Jeffry showed me some scars. "I would not have been able to play tennis again, well, to play tennis properly at all, without some biomechatronic implants …"

I gasped. as I had not expected that because … wait … "who has made those implants? I have got a hunch …" I gasped and suspired thrice before pronouncing my thoughts: "Quinn Pensky … has she built and invented the implants into your body?"

Jeffry choked hard, "the devil must have told you … well, it is true that your sister's best friend is deeply involved, she has been the one to design the implants … and she had even assisted the surgery, but the latter had been properly conducted by your uncle … Glazer Brooks."[5:16]

Doc Glazer was the monozygotic twin brother of my father, a really scary kind of a medic, though. I remember when he had once poulticed my wounds, and this had caused more scars than the wound itself. He was certainly not much of an inventor and medical engineer.

The latter was of course Quinn Pensky's strength, and I had been her patient and her test rabbit more than just once in my life here at Pacific Coast Academy, and this had not gone without scars. My feet were still burning from her attempts of curing my bad cold by means of tickling my feet with laserbeams, or something like that … whatever it was, I could not and was not willing to remember it. She had also tried to suck the bacteria off my tongue with a vacuum cleaner,[5:17] and I taste a lot differently ever since. But nothing had ever been beating her abuse of me for studying the consequences of sleep withdrawal.

What I wanted to say, the combination of Doc Glazer and Quinn Pensky was a totally explosive one, and it was not possible for me to avoid thinking about possible, or rather unimaginable, colateral effects of their treatment.

Both Quinn Pensky and Samantha Puckett were from Seattle, but there was even a whole lot more connecting them, in the sense of them having become acquainted way before Samantha Puckett's arrival at Pacific Coast Academy for a few weeks, until the blond venom's expulsion for unruly demeanour. More precisely, Quinn Pensky had been the family surgeon of the Puckett family, and especially she had performed several cosmetic operations and eye lasering[5:18] on Samantha's and Melanie's mother. Quinn was working with a junior license issued by uncle Glazer, and she operated almost all of the time in Come On Inn in downtown Los Angeles, a really rundown spelunc of the worst sort.

When hearing about teh accident of Jeffry Norgin, Quinn had been embarrassed by Sam's misbehaviour, because of the aforementioned bonds, and she had promised to come up with something allowing him to forget about the bad accident caused by the blond devil.

Summing it up: Jeffry Norgin was now a cyborg, and this explained his incredible abilities as a tennis player and made him the big favourite. And here he was not hiding from Zoey, but from curious inquisitors such as Jeremiah Trottman, or, even worse, Robert Shapiro from nearby Hollywood School For The Professional Performance Arts, a most dangerous paparazzo.

I had to promise not to tell Zoey that Quinn and uncle Glazer had been the ones to provide him with the biomechatronic implants allowing him to play tennis at this level. But he would have been willing to make statement to officer Vega about the unrestrained violence of Samantha Puckett if this had not had as a consequence the necessity of getting his scars examined officially and thus his biomechatronic implants discovered, making him possibly lose all his tennis trophies, the only thing that had ever meant anything to him since the accident.

For the time being, Jeffry just wanted to impress Zoey with his great abilities as a tennis player, like punishing her for having simply let him down after seventh grade.

I did not think this right, no, I did not want to defend Zoey's demeanour towards jeffry from back then, but Norgin should definitely have fessed up to vbeing a cyborg instead of taking the trophies away from normula human kids without biomechatronically enhanced abilities. But could I simply backstab him and betray his … cheating?

In addition, I did not really know whether there was a rule against cyborgs in high school championships, I just felt it wrong, just like doping, and I would become pretty embarrassed in the case of the non-existence of a rule against them.

Now the tennis champion was called to his match, and I better took my feet and made it out of there.

* * *

**5.7 The Champion**

I came to sit next to Zoey when watching the tennis matches, and at least my recent growth propulasion made the blond Mary Sue refrain from getting me to sit on her lap, as I used to be forced to when younger and a lot smaller. Of course as a true Stingray, as we students from Pacific Coast Academy were called because of our crest, I cheered for my school mates. But I remembered exceptions from the last years:

During Zoey's wrestling match against Chuck Javers, Stacey Dillsen had cheered for the creep because of his strong arms, and this was understood as really weird. But she revised her opinion about the wrestling tank when my sister was hurt during the process. Well, excessive rakes had got the screaming fangirls on their site, even those from other schools.

Before Stacey Dillsen, we had got a veritable bimbo wench at Pacific Coast Academy, and that was no other than Zoey's room mate and best friend forever, Nicole Bristow. The latter was really excited by everything related to cute boys, and thence her parents took her away from our school and transferred to no nearby Eastridge.[5:19] This was one of the school that had rented us cheerio girls in the times when Pacific Coast Academy had still bee reserved for boys or when girls had been an eclatant minority, as described before. She had really cheered for all cute boys from whatever team, and when corrected by Zoey, she had used to look extremely dumbfounded.

As expected, Chase Bartholomew Matthews was absolutely no match for Jeffry, and he sighed deeply when leaving the court, beaten for the umptteenth time by the same adversary. he had always promised to train harder, but against a cyborg? I so wanted to stand up and shout how foul that had been.

There was nothing to stop Norgin now, and Quinn Pensky's articifial biomotorics were not to be beaten by humans. Of course this was kind of sort of backstabbing, but the former geek girl did not express her joy about the perfect system explicitly in the public.

But Logan's hired reporters were of course allowed to do so, and in this case it was Robert Shapiro from Hollywood School For The Professional Performance Arts, but that freak was not alone, he was accompanied by a doll — or at least that was what it looked like prima facie. But Robbie was talking to the doll who appeared to listen to the name |Rex", a Latin word for "king", and the puppet even answered more reasonably than her master. So maybe the doll was really an artificially intelligent talking robot, invented by no other than Quinn Pensky?

Shapiro was interviewing the "well-deserved" champion, videlicet jeffry Norgin, and at some point, Rex intervened by remarking: "Norgin is certainly an alien robot, just like me!" Well, it took one to know one, of course …

Robbie was really consternated when he had heard hhis usually inanimate pal talk about this, but then he could not stop forwarding the question.

But Norkin went completely pale and admitted to being chock full with biomechatronic devicesm, provoking a huge scandal.

* * *

**5.8 Sam gets arrested.**

And then ther was a shock for all of us fans from Carly Shay's web show, as Samantha Puckett had been arrested for the onslaught upon the life of Jeffry Norgin and of Shane Diamond. Zoey's former suitor had told his past crush about everything, now that he had been outed by supersmart doll Rex.

We were not able to watch Carly's show, but some bird had twittered unto us, and it was a big shock. Samantha and Carly were customers of Gallini's pie shop, and the assistant baker was really officer Vega under cover who, down to Norgin, had finally found the proof necessary to arrest my ex-girlfriend for her misdeeds.

For Zoey, there was now no longer a reason to prohibit the show, given that the devil incarnate was gone, and she was going to tell Rivers and Burman to relax the censorship.

Of course, Carly was not able to continue her web show without a co-moderator, so what was the show going to turn into? We would be allowed to view that masterpeace of entertainment again, but it would hardly ever be the same.

* * *

**Chapter 6 Zoey's Assistant**

* * *

**6.1 Rowenda Arlington**

Finally, there was a new session of the wonderful web show, and we had missing ot badly. But what was it going to be without Sam, an evil creep indeed, but the spice of the web show, after all?

Fredward Benson counted down the seconds: "Five … four … three … two …"

Carly grinned in her usual excessively cool manner, delaring "I am Carly!"

Another girl growled, "and I am Sam!"

Carly and the new girl looked at each other,with a consternated facial expression.

Fredward Benson inserted a virtual banderole, saying in big and blood red letters: "No!"

Carly announced, "we have got a new co-moderator: Rowenda Arlington … call her Wendy!"[6:1]

Rowenda bowed to the audience, and she was introduced as a girl from Seattle Ridgeway who was hanging out often enough with Carly and Sam to be familiar with life behind the scenes and to serve as a drop in replacement for the criminal blonde.

OK, I hoped that even with Rowenda instead of Samantha it would still be a rocking show, or was Zoey able to find some corpses in the new co-host's locker?

Carly was still not convinced that Sam had been arrested justly, and she deemed her innocent, well, I wasn't really, either, Zoey had forced me to think so, but that did not matter, did it?

* * *

**6.2 Prom Outfits**

Due to all the efforts of getting for Samantha what — in her opinion — she had had coming, my sister had severely neglected her duty for the impending senior prom, about some hundred sets of tuxedos and gowns. Needless to say, time was rushing like crazy, and Zoey had still not told our parents that she was preferring to go to fashion school instead of a renowned college allowing her to make it to law school or to master of business stuff classes.

I saw the mountain of work awaiting Zoey, and I sighed deeply, suggesting, "why don't you get some support? There are others able to sew and knit, too, such as Mark del Figgalo."

Zoey shuddered for most extreme disgust, as she did not want to hear again about Quinn Pensky's dweebish ex-boyfriend of the worst sort. "He may knit, but he has got a really gross tatse, trust me, and his designs would be abominable, bear wioth it!"

Claire Sawyer, our aforementioned family lawyer of some sort, asked whether there was a textile creation club of some sort here at Pacific Coast Academy, a question that had to be answered in a negative manner by my sister.

Zoey had previously tried to talk Dean Rivers into doing something like that, but he had only been able to forward the request to Mr. Bradford. And the latter, whom we remember as sternly hostile to coeducation, had always been insisting that girls' hobbies would never be promoted by Pacific Coast Academy.

Claire Sawyer talked about her own school's textile creation club at James K. Polk which had always been a cool team. Of course those kids were stuck in their own pile of work, but maybe Zoey would be able to borrow one or the other volunteer. "You better ask the club adviser, Mr. Monroe."

Zoey sighed deeply, but there seemed to be no imaginable way around delegating some of her work, as total deviation from my sister's usual path.

* * *

**6.3 A Trace Of Miles Brody**

Before Samantha's arrest, I had asked Carly's gang for help in finding Miles Brody, the only person from which I hoped to get informations about the content of the hidden book, especially who was potentially able to read the language it was written in, with Greek letters, but definitely not Greek. Also, Miles was well-acquainted with the history of our library,and if there was someone able to figure how the book had made it right there, it was definitely our former master bookworm.

And today, we received an answer from some viewer of Carly's show who had mailed us directly. His name was Logan Douglas Filmore Bradford,[6:2] and he worked as a teacher at some school in New York City. His favourite student, Amanda MacKay, was an avid watcher of Carly's web show, and she had viewed a session where Carly had forwarded my request to the whole audience. Amanda had correctly guesses that her teacher was very well acquainted with Miles Brody, it had just been a hunch. probably because Douglas Filmore had always been a nerd as well, and it took one to know one for real.

Of course I was shocked by the family name, as it was the same as that of our school's foundation family, and so there was a chance that this was not a coincidence, in other words, Douglas Filmore was a relative of our overlord.

On the other hand, it was hard to believe that our big boss would not employ his cousin, nephiew, or even son, whatever, at the school he was running, given Douglas Filmore's excellent references, at least according to the _Interweb Database Of High School Teachers_.

But the connection with Miles Brody really suggested that there had been some link, of one kind or the other, between Douglas Filmore and the foundation family of Pacific Coast Academy.

The teacher from the other end of America would have offered to show up here in person, but he had not got the time for doing so, and he was an expert for the natural sciences, and not for history, old languages, or something like that.

OK, these excuses were all acceptable, but I wondered whether there had been more to it, such as some inner family discords in the house of Bradford.

But all these thoughts were now of little relevance for my brain when compared to the question concerning the whereabouts of Miles Brody. And the answer given by Douglas Filmore Bradford was that Miles was working as an intern for the Library of Congress in Washington, DC — not to be confused with the state of Washington, the area surrounding Seattle.

Was Douglas Filmore able to make us contact Miles? I imagined the nerd working somewhere in a dusty corner in the heart of the huge library, hard to find for anyone without a compass and a sextant. I was already lost with ease in our own library, but the Library Of Congress was multiple times as large. The uncanny teacher promised to try to do so, but it was possible that Brody did not want to get disturbed for the time being.

* * *

**6.4 Ficus Monroe**

Zoey had actually contacted Mr. Ficus Monroe[6:3] from James K. Polk, and they were now talking about her issues in their lounge. I had accompanied Zoey, because I had got the idea of asking Mr. Monroe for help for Zoey's career choice. Maybe this was not really a great idea, but it was better than letting her drown in her self-made doubts.

Zoey shook habds with the teacher from the school in Santa Clarita, who was not only the adviser of the club for textile creations, but also occasionally a coch for the basketball team, but even more a teacher for life science and an adviser for the school newspaper.

As Zoey had been active for our basketball team sincer her first days at this scjool, even against the will of Logan Reese, she had been several times in the sectionals and regionals. The team from James K. Polk was somewhat familiar to her as an extremely tough opponent, especially one Seth Powers, a tall blond rake who was said to let a basketball gyrate on his fingertips even while sleeping, probably furing the classes, as dumb as he was indeed. She acknowledged the strength of Monroe's squad, especially the great team spirit which she had often missed in the stingray gang which had been dominated by a few individuals, most of the time: Logan Reese.

By the way, our school had got a newspaper as well, it was named _Daily Stingray_[6:4] and run by the same creep that was responsible also for the school tv, videlicet Jeremiah Trottman. This already explained how lame it was , after all, abd we would have needed some better team for this.

But now it was time to talk about business, and Zoey showed Ficus Monroe some of her designs she wanted to get realised for the impending senior prom.

The teacher from Santa Clarita was truly impressed, and he sighed because he had never made it that far. "Yes, that is so promising, I will try to get my best students to support you in your quest. We are also stuck in our own prom preparations, but with those demonstrations of supreme creativity, my kids will certainly feel honoured to help you out."

Zoey smiled, looking forward for one girl or too to be sent in as soon as possible by Monroe as a well needed reinforcement.

* * *

**6.5 Olivary Biallo**

Zoey was already awaiting the girl from the sewing club of Mr. Monroe at James K. Polk, and she had prepared a lot of designs and prototypes for that avail. Finally, someone did arribe and look for Zoey, but it ws not necessarily a girl, but a rather dweebish and weird looking guy whom I remembered having seen on the campus like four years ago.

Zoey wondered what the dweeb was up to, but she shook hands with him, anyways.

Then the intruder introduced himself as Jerome Crony from James K. Polk in Santa Clarita, a member of the sewing club of Ficus Monroe, which — apparently — did not only consist of girls — as falsely assumed by my sister.

Now Zoey recognised him as well, but under a different name. "Really Crony? Or should I say … Olivary Biallo?"

Crony twitched and shivered, whimpering "no, please, do not remind me of that crappy thing!"

Zoey looked aghast, and she started stammering, "OK, so you are a textile creator … whatever …"

Now I was finally able to remember the episode concerning this dweeb, an event from Zoey's first year at Pacific Coast Academy.

* * *

During the times when girls had been either completely excluded from Pacific Coast Academy or had stil been a vast minority, the school's aministration used to make up for this lack by inviting interested and selected girls from neighbouring schools, such as James K. Polk, Silver Springs, Brewster, Palmwood, Hollywood School For The Professional Performance Arts, et alii.

This was the case especially for Zoey's middle school ball. The girls were assigned to the boys by a computer, based on the answers to some questionnary. And Michael's girl was Olivary Biallo. a very exotic guy, something that scared and embarrassed Michael to no end. But there was no choice, as it was insane to go against the computer.

The evening of the ball was a pain for Michael as he had got problems bearing Olivary's lack of familiarty with our customs.

Fortunately, Olivary was forced around midnight to pray to the moon, as he was apparently a follower of a lunar cult of some sort.

Michael was left behind with a certain Farfalla, the little sister — or so he claimed — of Olivary Biallo.

Never since had any of us here at Pacific Coast Academy heard of the weird guy from nowhere land.

* * *

Zoey was of course curious why Crony alias Olli Biallo had been applying back then at Pacific Coast Academy for the middle school dance, as a girl. "Do you like crossdressing or something like that in general?" She was certainly by absolutely no means keen on having to work together with someone as creepily weird as him.

Alas, Crony, Olivary, or whoever, was defonitely not willing to loosen his tongue, and his face went totally pale. "Don't tell anyone at my school that I am in the sewing club! My life does depend on it!"

Zoey choked hard, and she stammered, "you fooled my school mates, and now you want to beg me for discretion? Hello? What have I missed?"

But time was really pressing, and Zoey needed desperately any available helping hand, so she decided to talk one more to Ficus Monroe about the situation.

* * *

**6.6 Answer From Miles**

Finally, there was the long since awaited answer by Miles Brody, the one pundit I had hoped most support from. But, of course, it was not easy for him to take a detailled look at the outworn book still waiting — or so I hoped — in our library. On the other hand, there was one impending opportunity for him to come to Pacific Coast Academy pretty soon, and this was the impending homecomeing on our campus to which he was invited, just like all alumni.

Alas, Miles appeared worried because he had heard about the possibility of soothsayers and witches interested in this book, as he refused to believe in theire existence.

This ereminded me so awkwardly of the situation of Michael Barret and his claims about having traded with Takato, who did not exist, kind of, sort of.

So, whom was I going to believe … Megan Parker and her witchcraft intuition, or Miles Brody and his rationalism? Switching forth and back appeared to me a little bit like two-faced lying and treason of the Benedict Arnold kind of sort.

* * *

**6.7 Fredrick Figglehorn**

And once more it was time for us to watch a new session of Carly's wonderful web show.

This time, Rowenda and Carly showed us video clips produced by Fredrick Figglehorn, a teenager just like us, and those were totallky funny because of the unlikely scenes and the distorted voice of Fredrick.

Unfortunately, Fredward was not exactly pleased by those clips, and he expressed that at the end of the web session. Maybe he had been leaning a little bit too far out of the window, as many fans of Fredrick's videos, and there were quite a few here at Pacific Coast Academy, some of them watching with us, would be upset by is negative statement.

And, indeed, Wendy Gellar stood up and protested aloud against Fredward's inappropriate statements against Figglehorn's fantastic work, and she gestured wildly, simulating the action of throwing a stone at the technological producer of Carly's show.

Millie Brandon announced to squish Fredward benson like a spider with her feet, should he dare to repeat such a misjudgment againts Figglegorn once again, and in her vicinity.

Sandy Baldwin tried hard to get her room mates to calm down, and she suggested to write a polite and formal email to te show, asking Freddie to take back his nonsensical claims according to which Fredrick Ficklehorn's videos sucked, or whatever was the exact wording.

I truly hoped that the situation would cool down pretty soon, or otherwise there would be some sort of trench war here at Pacific Coast Academy, causing Dean Rivers to come down and ban Carly's web show once more from our local network.

* * *

**6.8 Freddie kills Fred.**

The next day, things had not turned better, inspite of my hopes that both sides would have camed down.

Quite the contray, Ashley Blake was the first to discover a fat message on _Splash Face_ saying something like "Freddie killed Fred."

In a note, Fredrick Figglehorn announced giving up on the activity of producing and spreading his funny movies on the interweb because of Fredward Benson's criticism of the worst sort.

As we would come to here not much later, the situation at Ridgeway was a disastrous one, as Fredward was eliminated from all the clubs at his school, and the fans of Figglehorn were now protesting most violently against the web show.

* * *

**6.9 Zoey's Decision**

My sister would certainly have started to complain once more against the web show at our school's administration, but she was stuck in a morass of other troubles. Mr. Monroe was once again in Zoey's lounge, because she was really desperate.

My sister was still not convinced of Crony's integrity, and I was not sure that Monroe was really dispersing her doubts by stating: "Jerome Crony is a member of a bully gang at James K. Polk, the head of the gang beig manly jock William Loomer, a guy that has already more bad remarks in his folder than fit into a shelf of our school's archive."

Zoey's face went even more pale, and she squealed, "what … I am supposed to work together with a bully?"

I started shivering as well, as I has already been threatened by several bullies here at Pacific Coast Academy, such as Keith Finch[6:5] and even Zoey's room mate Dana Cruz.[6:6] Zoey had always tried to protect me from them, and this was unfortunately often more than just a little bit embarrassing and had made me upset, although I had come to understand ever since that she was just trying hard to help and protect me wherever possible, for she understood it that her transfer to Pacific Coast Academy included her obligation to be a substitute mom and dad for me, at the same time.

Monroe had got a hard time to calm her down, and he explained, "see, even I had been a bully as a middle school boy, because I had just been in the wrong company, andWilliam Loomer is an incredibly bad one, I tell you. Unfortunately, Crony's problem is that he feels to need to demonstrate his manlyness by hanging out with those jocks, and to hide his girlish hobbies rigorously at any cost.

Zoey had still got problems undertsanding the situation, but she was also surprised to hear, just as me, that one of the obviously nicest teachers of his generations had once been a bully. She panted heavily, because she had not really got a choice, as the female members of the sewing club, in other words: all members barring Crony, were not really passionate about their job, and they just had been sebnt into the club by oldfashioned parents who were of the opinion that a girl needs to be able to patch and sew torn garments of her hubby and kids in her future life. And none of them showed even a trace of creativitity, as completely opposed to Crony.

Sp far, Zoey had avoided talking about her impending choice between a career according to her parents's wishes and one in the fashion business, but the above remarks seemed to hit the spots. So I asked Monroe whether he could recommend unto my sister a career as a fashion designer.

Zoey coughed and poked me, grunting, "Dustin, what are you talking …" but she made a totally tortured facial expression, showing clearly that she was really worried about that topic.

Ficus Monroe nodded understandingly, and he explained, "I would have loved to go into the same direction, but my creativity was never strong enough. It was not easy for me to apply for a position as a teacher for typoical female subject, such as life science, and there are many school districts in rural regions that would never employ male teachers for this subject. Los Anmgeles county is different, of course, but it is quite overrun."

Zoey sighed once more when having to listen to Monrioe's long story about his college time until his first teaching jobs, finally leading to James K. Polk.

Life science was by the way not a subject offered here at Pacific Coast Academy, and this was yet another heritage from the times prior to coeducation and the heavy prejudices of our overlord.

I already shuddered for disgust because Mr. Bradford was going to give a long and usually disgusting speech at the introduction of the homegiving, and I would have to go there because of Miles Brody, whom I had to interceive.

Zoey's particular problem was that she needed an internship in order to get admitted to fashion school in New York City, the best in the world, mwell, maybe excluding some in Europe, such as Milan, Paris, or so. And life in New York City was very expensive, impossible to afford without mom's and dad's support which they would most likely deny, as their idea of Zoey's career was not the same as Zoey's.

Ficus Monroe offered to write a letter to our mom and dad, explaining why Zoey should definitely go to fashion school instead of business or law school.

Zoey nodded solemnly, but she was not sure whether mom and dad would listen to some teacher they had never yet heard from.

In any case, Olivary Biallo alias Jerome Crone would soon thereupon start to work with my sister on the remaining prom outfits.

* * *

**6.10 Michael and Biallo meet again.**

Michael Barret was still really intimidated by the fact that he had lost a girlfriend over one of his many phobias, and because of some guy who did not even exist.

Due to Miles Brody's announce of showing up at the homecoming event, which was unusually late this year, finding Takato was no longer such a big concern, but just in case … yeah, I was still interested in any trace.

Michael supposed that he would find Takato again if he really wanted to learn something and failed miserably, and now he was desperate in finding a decent girl as a senio prom partner, one that would not go and trat him like the last dirt as Lisa Perkins had done.

Stirring the tuna and stomping the grapes, which had been his tasks in order to learn driving a stick switched car, had been embarrassing, but they had done the trick, so he hoped the best from Takato also this time. "But it has to be a real girl, not … Olivary Biallo?" P Jerome Crony had been following me when I was making the way from Zoey's lounge to the boys', just in order to visit "some old friend." He squealed enthusiastically, "Michael! My good old friend, it has been so long time …"

Michael Barret shivered and grunted, "no, I will not invite you to our senior prom, never again dance with you!" He was looking for a mouse hole to squeeze himself through.

Olivary grinned. "Aw, Michael! You are always really funny! I am going to design and to tailor your prom suit, so I need to take your size, though."

Michael was still not sure whether the return of his "friend" meant anything good at all or not. But he knew that he needed Takato's help more urgently than ever before, lest he wanted to end up with Olivary as a gown-wearing prom partner. "What happened to your sister Farfalla? Does she already have an invitation for the prompt?"

Olivary shook her head, explaining that Farfalla had been bitterly disappointed when left behind by Michael after the middle school ball.

In ninth grade, Michael had first been hankering perversely after Lola, and then he had got another girlfriend, Vanessa Tayler, for whom he had really made a monkey of himself.[6:7]

I did not know what had ever become of Vanessa, the former captain of the girls' volleyball team, well, it was really a mixed team, but it was the only one where the girls had been a blatant majority even early on, for boys were generally more attracted by tough manly men's sport such as football, and Farfalla was one I had never come to see at all, probably because she had never been a student of Pacific Coast Academy in the first place.

Olivary reveiled that Farfalla was not even his sister, she had just been teaching him to feign being an exotic creep from her own homelands, which was necessary in order to distract from his real identity as a middle school boy from Santa Clarita.

OK, that made a lot of sense, and he wanted apparently not get discovered by anyone as the only male member of the textile creation club of James K. Polk.

Finally, Michael gave in, for he thought that a decent tuxedo would certainly make it easier for him to find a decent prom partner that would not make fuun of him behind hid back, as Lisa Perkins had always done, especially when Mr. Takato had entered the stage.

Nevertheless, Michael swore never to drive a stick switched car again, and he had been looking for a cheap and fairly new automatically switched car.

Fortunately, Carly's web show had come to his rescue.

Recently, Spencer Shay had found an incredible offer on the _Galaxy Wars_ shop: An authentic vehicle fromone of his favourite movies, _Galaxy Wars_ by Macolm Reese. Alas, the car turned out as really new and just looking like an original vehicle from that film.

And now Spencer was still looking for a buyer to get it off him, he was even going to grant a fairly cheap price.

This was the right moment for Michael to intervene duly and buy the futuristic vehicle off Spencer Shay, although he needed to get the money for it somehow, probably by borrowing it from Logan and doing some errands for him in order to pay it back, a very well established model for getting some bucks at Pacific Coast Academy, but, as we know, one with lots of drawbacks.

For example, Michael had once been forced to fetch a parcel from one of Logan's many step mothers from the Pacific Coast Academy post office, and that gift had contained some of his favourite cookies. But a horse had been following him across the campus and eaten them all,[6:8] making Logan to add the value of the cookies to Michael's debts instead of cancelling them.

Maybe Michael should have sought Takato's help for finding a way to pay back his growing debts, but one that was not related to any of Samantha's attempts of paying back what she had owed to Carly and Fredward?

* * *

**6.11 Reconciling Fredward And Fredrick**

In the meantime, my middle schoolpals had come up with a plan for reconciling Fredward benson and Fredrick Figglehorn.

The producer of cool fun videos was living in a treehouse in Idaho, well, he was not living there, but he had got one and spent a lot of time in it, way up in the trees. Robbie Carmichael had once got a treehouse in Seattle, and he had tried hard to get one even here at Pacific Coast Academy, which was not easy because of all those stupid rules in vigour on the campus. But Stacey Dillsen, an aspiring future carpenter, was willing to build him one, next to our dormitory halls. We just needed to bribe Dean Rivers.

In addition, we had heard that Fredrick Figglehorn was a big fan of the old movies of Ashley Blake, and thus there was a solution. We would just have to make a movie with Ashley and Fred, to be shown in some of the next episodes of Carly's web show.

We had already sent a request to Idaho and were now awaiting an answer.

* * *

**Chapter 7 Coming Home**

* * *

**7.1 Ornations**

Dean Rivers had ordered to ornate our campus for the return of the alumni, and this had been the chance for sneakin in the plans for a tree house for Scooter alias Robbie, which was desperately needed for the impending visit of Fredrick Figglehorn. He had admitted to doing everything for a movie with Ashley, but he needed to see some pictures of the scenario beforehand, especially one of the tree house. It had to be a lot better than his own, maybe higher and more spacy to start with.

The main problem was the sculpture of Old Mr. Bradford, the founder of Pacific Coast Academy. His son and current overlord was horribly poud of it, and he had ordered us to shrub and polish the brass sculpture, making it shine like nobody's business.

Quinn Pensky had invented some "great" polish for Logan's Sky store, but she had never tested it. Time was pressing hard, so we had not got any other choice but giving it a try.

* * *

**7.2 Jackson Colt**

In tonight's session of Carly's web show, the hosts had to announce some great news. "Jackson Colt wis coming to the Seattle Battle Dome, and we have received backstage tickets for the big mixed martial showdown. Of course we will be there and show you live pictures!"

Many of us cheered violently, as martial arts were really popular here at Pacific Coast Academy, not just plain old wrestling, as we had experience when we had hosted aforementioned regionals for high school wrestling.

We were especially looking forward to seeing such an even moderated by someone different from Jeremiah Trottman.

And Jackson Colt was not just one of many martial artists, he was plainly the greatest, and a winner of a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, after a close fight against some Russian supertank with twice of his experience, before becoming a professional and mowing them all down like a ripe corn field in Kansas.

And we kids were already starting to run bets about the martial artists competing in that event.

* * *

**7.3 List Of Alumni**

This year, the list of the former Pacific Coast Academy students was particularly long, and we were able to sneak a view at them. Among the alumni invited to this year's reunion were some very well know people, such as Malcolm Reese, the father of Logan Reese. Actually Logan was already the fourth generation of Pacific Coast Academy graduates from the Reese family.

His grandfather, a former teacher at the Californian Institute For Technology,[7:1] was also on the list.

My eyes bugged out when I spotted a certain Mr. Shay, the grandfather of Carly and Spencer. Too bad Carly was not supposed to come with him, as she was busy in Seattle with her web show, oh well, and home coming was at the same time as the wonderous event featuring so many martial artists, the one that the gang had obtained backstage tickets for.

One name in the long list was struck through, and this was no other than aforementioned Douglas Filmore Bradford. That fact fostered my hunch that he was indeed related to our overlord and part of the foundation family, but that he was more or less the black sheep and thus never mentioned by our boss, never made teaching here at his ancestor's school, and never invited to the homecoming events. Maybe Douglas Filmore had backstabbed our ruler in some sense, as had — or so said Master Bradford — his wife's family?

Oops, have I already mentioned that my uncle Glazer was also on the list of the alumni invited to the homecopming event? That had been the primary reason why my dad had chosen Pacific Coast Academy for me.

* * *

**7.4 Overprotective**

Carly, Fredward, and Rowenda had been up to making it to aforementioned martial parade, but they had not taken into account a possible veto not only from Fredward Benson's evil mother Marissa, but also from Carly's brother and guardian Spencer. The first should have been expected, as marissa was known to be a anexcruciatingly perverted and possessive mother hen, but in Spencer's case this appeared unanticipated.

Well, there was acertainly a good reason for it, as Spencer's guardianship had been under permanent probation. Their grandfather had suspected that he was not as responsible as he should have been, and thus he was permanently performing control calls. And as sure as hell the old shark from Seattle wiuld not have allowed Carly to go to such a dangerous event. Had Spencer allowed her to do so, and the lawyer of Yakima had ever found out,

Now Robbie made me aware of the following: The invited alumni were allowed to take a few family members with them. As Carly was now no longer able to attend the martial show,adn the atter was scheduled during our homecoming week, and, as a consequence, Carly was now free to make it here to the campus for the homecoming week, right along with her grandpa.

Of course there was a hitch: Someone would have to tell her grandpa first and suggest to take Carly along to the homecoming week, and Carly would have to be ready show show up on the campus even without Rowenda and Fredward. One of our technology freaks, such as Wayne Gilbert, no, better someone else, as Carly would most likely hate Wayne, would be chosen to make a video moderated by Carly, and then send it Fredward for further adaption for their web show.

* * *

**7.5 Anticipating Carly's Arrival**

Indeed, Grandpa Shay had achieved talking Carly into coming with him to our homecoming, as this would get her away for a few days from her friends, not just Samantha, in whom he had never trusted much.

Carly was apparently a fan of the chick flick movies of Malcolm Reese, and she was now desperately looking forward to her very first occasion for interviewing the grand czar of Hollywood movies. She had also heard about his excessively hot son Logan.

This, in turn, made me sign for extreme despair, because Logan was such a jerk, and Carly should have done a whole lot better, such as … blush!

In addition, Carly did not yet know that Logan's TV channel _Dingo_ was plagiarising vigorously from Carly's web show. Well, I did not know either because I refused to watch crap like _Totally Terry_.

And many other celebrities were here as well, which allowed Carly to plan for several interesting episodes ahead.

* * *

**7.6 Polish**

I had been busy all day rubbing Quinn's polish cream to the base of the sculpture of the founder of Pacific Coast Academy, a monument supposed to sparkle brighter than some thousands of suns during the impending homecoming celebrations. Others were responsible for the top, which could naturally not be reached by us from little guys, and we needed some equipment we would also have to use for the treehouse to be built soon thereafter. Rickety ladders were probably not ideal. Our custodian, Mr. Vandell,[7:2] would have loved to prove his climbing prowess, his advanced age notwitchstanding, but Dean Rivers insisted in appropriate climbing helps.

The sun was now on its bright side, and the brass started glittering like diamonds in the tropical sun, making our headmaster moan for awe.

But there was something our headmaster had not thought about. In order to get brass glitter like this, it was necessary to modify the crystalline configuration of the metal significantly, at least on the surface. And a partial change of the structure of a crystal was not unlikely to promote corrosions or other deepgoing chemical changes, affecting adversely the stability of the metal.

This was something Quinn Pensky should have thought about before recommending her own brand of polish, And none of us middle school kids were exactly aware of this connection, either, but we were not the science geeks, so it was not our task to consider that, was it? Granted, this was not the first time that her inventions had been subject to adversary side effects, and I could sing you stories about that, but I don't really want to, do I? Granted, some of them had already happened before the start of her blasphemic concubinacy with Logan Reese, but they accumulated over and over ever since.

* * *

**7.7 The Opening**

And now the big parade of the alumni was about to start, not without some musical backup. Michael Barret had been forced by Dean Rivers to blow the national anthem on his transversal flute. This way — or so he imagined — there would never be a chance for him to find a decent girl … or … wait … maybe it would get Takato show up in order to teach him the way?

Zoey and I had to be with our uncle Glazer in order to inform him about all the changes since his last visit to Pacific Coast Academy, and there had been so many of that sort, given that this last time had beenbefore the school's switch to coeducation. Suddenly, I spotted Carly Shay and her grandpa, making my heart almost stand still, and in this case, it was a good thing to know that Glazer was a doc … wait, was it really such a good thing?

Miles Brody would arrive only a day later, but with a cardial insufficience, it would by absolutely no means be easy to meet him in a secret place, for Zoey would take care that someone of her choice would follow me everywhere and make me take my prescribed medicine and prevent me from getting excited beyond reason.

Now Glazer dshook hands with Grandpa Shay, which made Carly come even closer to us, and my face was now one shade of flaming crimson. He had graduated in 1984, right before the Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles, and that was about thirty years after the old shark's glorious days at Pacific Coast Academy. But uncle Glazer and the shark appeared to know each other anyways.

As Carly looked very much like Megan, the girl who had wreaked an insane amound of havoc just two years ago, one should have expected that many people here would have been confused, but, fortunately, the grandpa had made it clear before the homecoming event that she was a different person, indeed.

Glazer talked to the sharl of Yakima: "This is my niece Zoey, a gifted interest in making it to a law school. She needs a recommendation, and so I thought that …"

Zoey went pale, because she had not expected that. But apparently our dad had asked his brother to use his connection in order to get a good recommendation or even a paid internship for my sister, as a perfect spring stick to catapult suited for the purpose of catapulting her into the career he and mom had got in mind for the blond Mary Sue.

Grandpa nodded solemnly. "I will see what I can do. By the way, my grandaughter is here for the first time, and she gets lost so easily."

Carly growled as she heard those words, because she was apparently no longer feeling like a little kid that needs to be supervised twenty-four out of twenty-four and seven out of seven.

Grandpa Shay askes Zoey to show Carly around. "we are accomodated in Venice Beach Hotel. Chambroaly's[7:3] has already been chock full. usually, I would have been content with a cheap inn, such as Come On,[7:4] but with a little girl like Carly, this is a too dangerous place. Just take her to the parking lot at eight post meridiem, but not later."

Come On Inn was the place where Quinn Pensky used to treat her patients, especially when performing eye lasering and cosmetic surgeries. Logan had especially forced her to perform a lot of the latter kind, as they were best paid.

Zoey did not really know what to say, as she was really more inclined towards a career as a fashion designer, especially since the start of her collaboration with Jerome Crony alias Olivary Biallo had been a whole lot smoother than she had feared from an official bully and gender bender. This appeared to be the consequence of Ficus Monroe's charisma. Of course, Zoey did not want to be impolite to the old shark, and so she promised to do her best. "We will talk about the career thing … tomorrow?"

Grandpa Shay nodded solemnly.

Was I now supposed to follow Carly and Zoey? My heart was still beating at quadruple speed, and my face was still a shade of deepest red, making me act awkward in Carly's vicinity. Thus I had to stay near Glazer, thusly missing out on a great occasion for starting to talk to my crush. Now I would have loved to know whether Carly and Zoey were going to talk about me, and — if so — what Zoey would have to say about my person and my life. She would easily have been able to backstab me and screw it all up for good. And I feared that she knew by now very well about my "secret" feelings for my favourite show host.

* * *

**7.8 The Ultranerd**

The next morning, I was called into the library in order to meet the one and only Miles Brody.

This building was of course not unaffected by the celebrations for the homecoming week, it was especially like an expedition of the yearbooks of the past. Maybe I should have studied them more closely in order to find hints concerning the means by which the ancient book had possibly made it into our hall of books?

Miles Brody was to be found in the usual place in the library, and I had still remembered it from the times before his graduation. He was already holding some kind of sort of encyclopaedia in his hands, whatever it was about, and he grinned nerdily. "OK, Dustin Brooks, you know for sure that my service is not for free?"

I nodded slowly, as I had kind of hoped to get away without having to "pay", but I was sorrily mistaken, and I should have seen that coming, as this had been the case when Zoey and her friends had sought out the nerd and begged him for help.

The payment that he had requested had been a date with Nicole Bristow, aforementioned former best friend of my sister. But that bimbo wench had left the building, erm, Pacific Coast Academy, already over two years ago. This may or may not have been beknownst to Miles, as he had been dug into this book house almost all of the time, but he had used to be well informed, anyways.

This time, he had switched to a different girl, and more precisely, Lola Martinez. Unfortunately, he was not satisfied by pictures of her bra, and not even by her used tampons which I had been able to collect during my sleepovers in Zoey's dormitory room, for the purpose of making money by selling them occasionally to desperate nerdy fanboys.

I knew Lola's phone number because Zoey had given it unto me for emergency cases only, and I offered to pass it to Miles. But I also had to warn him that Lola was now dating Vince Blake, "the quarterback … he is six foot four and full of muscles!" I shivered when imagining the perverted jock beat up the defenseless nerd. Of course there was no way for me to mention my findings to Lola Martinez or to Vince Blake in order to make them understand how much depended on her date with the creep.

He smiled thankfully, but he did not see that already as the fulfillment of our deal, rather as an anticipation or a first rate of payment. But at least, this was enough to get him started with taking a close look to my issues.

I showed him to the shelf standing in front of the alcove that ahd contained the book. After applying a rickety ladder and moving a few books aside, I was lucky to discover that the ancient artifact was still resting there.

Miles opened it carefully, wearing special antisceptic gloves, not for the purpose of protecting himself from ancient bookworm bites or so, and mot from ancient curses — in which he refused to believe — either, but in order to protect the cover and the pages from contamination with his own germs and the acidic blobs residing on the surface of the human skin. "Any contaact accelerates the decay and decomposition of the parchment and papyrus pages." Then he took a magnification glass and applied it to the writings. "Yes, they are a derivative of Greek script, but the language is Coptic," he started reasoning, "more precisely, it's the Sahidic dialect."

I asked him, "are you able to read it … Coppish or whatever it is called?"

Miles shrugged, and he explained, "I have seen it once or twice, but I have not learned it yet. But all I need is a Sahidic textbook, and I will be able to learn it within five … four … three … or maybe even two days."

I knew fromn Zoey that Miles was able to read very fast and that he had got a photographic rote memory, thus his statement was absolutely believable.

But there was no such thing as an encyclopaedia for this weird language in our library, and this meant that Miles was not immediately able to decipher the whole junk. Not knowing about the language did not prevent him from scanning the whole book within a few hours, though, enabling him to decipher it once he got hold of an appropriate textbook, which he guessed to be able to find in the Library Of Congress.

As mentioned before, Miles Brody was a plain rationalist and refused to believe in curses, deities, demons, spirits, and stuff like that, so it was better for me not to talk about my deepest fears connected to those scrolls and papyri.

For this time being, I was donr with the ancient booklet, but this would not make life easier for him.

* * *

**7.9 Cal**

Back on the campus, I met some other alumni that, like Miles, had graduated from Pacific Coast Academy during my life at this school.

One of them was Callum Coozeman[7:5] from nearby California Institute For Technology alias Caltech, which he claimed to have been named for him. He was commonly known as "Cal", and he had helped me with my first projects for science classes before girls got admitted. After that point, I had always asked Quinn for help, but this had of course always been connected with side effects. Too bad Quinn and Cal had never met here at Pacific Coast Academy.

Cal asked me what science was now looking like on here, and of course I started talking about Quinn's achievements, which were not unbeknownst to him. She had often impressed Caltech, and they would still welcome her, although Cal was sad because he had not heard of her in almost a year. She used to order equipment for her experiments from Caltech, and Cal had often been the one in charge with providing her with supplies, although he had never come to see her in person. Of course there were other things to tyalk about, for example our inept science teachers like Bromwell[7:6] and Beringer.[7:7] I also felt urged to mention th incident with Megan Parker demonstrating an invention by Melinda Crenshaw here on the campus. Cal had of course heard about this one, and he admired Mindy for her great work, a milestone of a progress in nuclear technology. And it was also inevitable for me to avoid talking about the reasons for Quinn's intellectual decay.

Cal sighed deeply when he heard about it, and he pitied Quinn, although our resident geek girl was probably too blind for her addiction to Logan Reese and not able to understand that she was doing so abominably wrong. "Maybe I should talk to her, because it fills my heart with infinite sadness to hear that Quinn's old self is going down the drain, leaving her in a quagmire of stupidity and mediocricity. Any brain is wasted on Logan Reese, a backbone would be sufficient for being with him."[7:8]

I deemed this an extremely good idea.

Cal was especially concerned aboiut Quinn as she was from Seattle, the town where he had just been given his next job. "I am hoing to teach science at Priorwood Prep School".[7:9] This was an academy, apparently not much unlike our 'pca, located in the outskirts of Seattle. Of course the vicinity of Hollywood made our school a lot special for many reasons, but his new school was certainly a thoroughly respected one. And thiongs became more interesting when he told me that he would soon live at Bushwell Plaza, which happened to be the same building as Carly and Spencer.

Thinking about Carly made me feel all fuzzy again, and I was fortunate that Cal was called away by someone else, otherwise I would have started to stammer in his presence like a monkey, thus not resulting in any good impression.

* * *

**7.10 Talking To Carly**

The cafeteria was now more than usual a giant bee hive, which was to be expected due to the huge amount of homecoming guests.

Waiting in the queue, pushing a tablet around on the rails, was never a big pleasure, but now it was even a royal pain, as some guests seemed to complain like nobody's business.

All of a sudden, I heard the sweetest possible voice next to me.

"Hi Dustin, that is your name, ain't it? I have heard that you are rally a total fan of my web show, ain't you?"

I turned around and noticed Carly Shay, fighting with her tablet. "Hi!" I was blushing into oblivion once more, but I still tried to help Carly with her dishes. "Pears may be really mean, right? Especially Pear Pods, they look like fruits, but you can't really eat them, that is so …" I stammered helplessly, but maybe Carly was even able to make some sense of my words — or so I hoped.

She grinned. "Oh, yeah, pernicious pears …" She panted and remarked , "your sister has talked quite a bit about you."

My head started spinning around like a record, because Zoey had certainly been able to destroy it all for me. Of course I was curious and wanted to know what she had been talking about.

Carly continued, "you have really been swimming in the campus fountain, and stuck your arm into a candy vendor machine in order to fetch snacks for her friends?"[7:10]

I went totally pale, for now I feared this was the end of the world.

Carly snickered. "That was really cool, wasn't it? I wish I could do the same."

I plastered a confused look. "Really? Yeah, sure …" That was so totally unexpected, wasn't it?

Finally, we found a free table in order to have our lunch.

I wondered whether Zoey had already told Carly about my former concubinacy with Samantha Puckett alias Trisha Kirby. This insecurity made me more and more nervous. I ws considering starting to mention Sam during lunch, but maybe she was precisely avoiding that topic because she was not over the forced separation from Sam, and I would just have rubbed salt into her wounds, something I would never have wanted to happen, so I better kept my stupid mouth shut.

Carly wanted to knpw something about the tree house we wre up to building for Fredrick Figglehorn in order to reconcile him with her web show, something she praised us for.

My friends like Robbie Carmichael jumped in and started talking as well,reducing some of my nervous tensions. I was certainly still blushing a deep shade of crimson, but my pals helped me to cool down slowly.

Carly was of course up to making some interviews, unfortunately also with Logan Reese, the "hottest guy at Pacific Coast Academy" — or so Carly judged. She also wanted to talk to Lola Martinez and to Ashley Blake, because she had heard that so many fans of her show were also fans of the movies with those young Hollywood celebrities.

Then we were finally done with our lunch and walked away, when Lola Martinez and Quinn Pensky entered the cafeteria. Lola spotted me, and she yelled at the very top of her brittle lungs, "hey, Dustin Brooks, you are selling my phone number to dweebs and bad kissers like Miles Brody? You have got to pay for this!" She picked an apple and threw it into my direction.

With lightening reflexes, Robbie Carmichael pushed me out of the trajectory of the abused fruit, which hit instead the butt of … Lord Bradford!

The owner of Pacific Coast Academy turned around, thundering "who was that?".

Inspite of her great acting prowess, Lola was not able to avoid betraying herself by her panic reactions. Now she was up for some trouble, wasn't she? On the other hand, she would certainly be able to get out of the whole crap again, using her acting prowess. In addition, not even Bradford wanted to miss out on the publicity for Pacific Coast Academy triggered by the impending conquest of an Oscar by our resident Hollywood starlet.

Carly whispered, "wow, you really did that unto Lola? You are really one heck of a scoundrel, I do like that!" She snickered merrily.

* * *

**7.11 Zoey And The Shark**

At the same time, but somewhere else opn the campous, Zoey was interviewed by grandpa Shay. Of course the interview was about her possible career as a lawyer, but I was unable to avoid thinking how easy it was ffor her to spoil everything possible for me with respect to Carly, if there was still a possibility.

A few hours later I would hear that Zoey had even been offered a paid internship at grandpa Shay's office in Yakima in the rural regions of Seattle, but she had declined it because, inspite of being gifted for a shark's career, she preferred to go into the direction of fashion creation arts.

You know what a hard decision this was for Zoey, after all.

But she did not leave Carly's grandad empty-handed, as she was able to name someone really gifted and also passionate for the job of a lawyer, and this was of course nobody other than aforementioned Claire Sawyer from Santa Clarita.

Nevertheless, the old shark was very sad as he would really loved to employ a promising intern like my sister. He would have loved to see Spencer as his successor, but the airhead of a grandson had dropped out of law school after three days in order to pursue his dream of a career as a freelance artist.

On the other hand, pur parents would now be really mad at Zoey, as she had skipped the — in their opinion — greatest opportubity in her life time, just in order to pursue a pie up in the sky that was her envisioned career in the fahion business.

Amd as Glazer had been the one to establish the contact with grandpa Shay, it was as inevitable as death that moim and dad would find out about Zoey's missed out occasion within rather short time.

* * *

**7.12 Carly's Departure**

Carly Shay appeared to have a lot of fun on our campus, and she was forward to incorporating some of the pictures we had made for her into the next sessions of her web show, as already anticipated by Fredward and Rowenda, especially the upcoming short movie with Fredrick Figglehorn and with Ashley Blake.

The treehouse was particularly interesting. Unfortunately, it had not yet been completed, as the preparations for the homecoming week had been the central priority on the campus. But once all guests were gone, we would continued, and faster than ever before.

* * *

**7.13 Another Appearance Of Takato**

I had not seen Michael Barret since in entrance parade of the alumni, but now he crossed my way, all excited, because he had got great news.

Indeed, Mr. Takato appeared to have answered Michael's prayers and finally promised to teach him finding girls that were not going to abuse him again.

I smiled, ans I asked hom, "cool, bit what are you supposed to do this time? Stomp more grapes and stir more sushi?"

Michael shook his head vigorously. "I have to play my flute … do you get it? This dern instrument which has already scared so many girls away." He sighed bitterly. "And I have to play with my clack-clack balls again."

Clackers were a pair of plastic balls connected by a string, a very popular toy from the Netherlands.

Michael added one additional detail: "But this time, I am supposed to blow the flute and bounce the clack-clacks with my soul!" He shrugged helplessly, for he was not sure how to do it in such a manner.

What scared me most was the fact that buddhism, unlike most western mystics, did not acknowledge anything like a soul, but Takato, a relised Zen master, made excessively frequent use of it.

And while I was busy thinking about this absurdity, the one and only true Takato appeared in front of me and Michael, sitting backward on a cow.

I glared at the Zen master in extreme awe, not knowing how to react exactly.

Takato smiled, and he seemed to know already about my efforts, trying to make sense of the ancient book. He explained, "in order to see what the book is actually about, do not search for sense in the letters, look for the meaning inside your soul!"

And there was this absurdity again, a buddhist telling me and other American kids to use our soul.

So, had my attempts of getting someone to translate the foreign language, Coptic — according to Miles Prody — been such a detour, now that I had almost achieved that goal, and all that had been missing was some foreign encyclopaedia in order to provide the masternerd with the necessary knowledge? This was hard for me, a student at one of the most demanding prep schools in the western world, to even try to swallow, with and without the problem of making sense of a buddhist talking about my soul.

And, all of a sudden, Mr. Takato was gone again, just like the cow he had been riding across the campus. Now I was the second pupil at Pacific Coast Academy to have come to see him. This made Michael sigh for relief, as he had not only got at least one witness when talking about his strange mentor in the presence of his remaining friends, but he was now also certain that he had not just gone crazy.

But we both were now standing in front of the problem of doing something "with our soul", whatever this meant.

* * *

**7.14 Dissolved Sculpture**

The homecoming guests were hailed once more by our overlord and the administration of Pacific Coast Academy, when somne embarrassing event struck like a lightening.

The sculpture of our "venerable" founder was, all of a sudden, no longer standing there, and Mr. Bradford's gaze was not one of the sort promising lots of joy and pleasure for me and my fellow students.

All that was left was a misshapen lump of brass covering the arble socket of the monument of the first member of the Bradford dynasty, and some thundering screams, thrice as loud as the aforementioned ones in the cafeteria, which expressed his dismay and consternation.

The most embarrassing circumstance was of course the one that all of this had happened in front of not just his own eyes, but those of hundreds of onlooking alumni.

A heart attack of Mr. Bradford was inevitable, but the creep was lucky because of having invited several medics to this homecoming week, including of course my uncle glazer.

Dean Rivers supposed that some zealots had committed a deliberate act of sabotage, but the truth, to be discovered weeks later by Quinn Pensky, was simply that her polish had caused the metal's crystal structure to turn unstable and … well, that was the result, and who had commanded us to apply the glitter cream? Right, this had been no other than our well-respected Dean Carl Rivers.

Mr. Bradford was carried away by paramedics, after uncle Glazer had diagnosed him with a heart attack and required 500 bucks from Dean Rivers for that action.

* * *

**Chapter 8 A New Casting Show**

* * *

**8.1 Natural Power**

Mr. Henning, the science teacher of Carly, Fredward, Rowenda, and some of their friends, was an ecopacifist creep, and he required his students to contribute something to their environment in a science project.

Those failing miserably would be forced to participate in so-called "Root And Berry Camp" during their spring break, some basic camping in the forrests outside the gates of Seattle.

Fredward Benson had not hesitated a moment and invented a technologically supervised dungheap with rain worms imported from Portugal because of their robustness and fast composting abilities.

Carly had been in doubt about what to do, as copying Fredward would have been lame, and she was disgusted by worms, anyways, well, who except Fredward Benson was not … Spencer had contacted their housemate Callum Coozeman — hitherto unbeknownst to them — on site, and they built a portable power generator, based off Mindy's great invention from the year before but much smaller and less dangerous. But she should have thought twice about it, as the inventions of all the great geniuses were not without severe drawbacks.

Fredward's project, although highly scientific and executed with a lot of thought, was a big failure, because importing worms from Europe was very expensive, swallowing tons of kerosine, or whatever the big transport planes used to swallow. He was such an idiot, and had to pay for his stupidity with being sent to Camp Root And Berry.

Carly was upset, because Cal had to disappear all of a sudden from Seattle when her project was almost done. The imcomplete project was still good enough for her to escape from the stupid camp, though.

* * *

**8.2 America Sings**

Casting shows were extremely popular those days, and one of the best was _America Sings_[8:1] by Ryan Dean Jackson,[8:2] a former pop star and nowadays record label owner of the extra class, just like his co-judges Gustavo Rocque and Nicholas Cage.[8:3]

Michael's ex-girlfriend Lisa Perkins had been in last year's edition of this wonderful show, but she had not made the finals and probably been punishing Michael for that period. The winner had been one Jordana Sporx,[8:4] one of the few exceptions in the history of the casting show, as most viewers used to be horny girls of the Samantha Puckett kind of sort, and they only voted for hot guys and "shipped" them as gay couples in fan stories.

This year, it was all coming down to a match between one David R. Couleda and one Wade Collins, a battle to the death, for the winner was going to take it all, and the loser was going to stand alone in some dark and cold corner.

According to the recent polls, everything looked nice and spice for Collins, apparently due to loads of girls of the aforementioned sort.

But Carly was not happy about this, and she expressed this in her web show, making it clear that David's voice was so infinitely much better than Wade's, and she asked all viewers to vote for David R. Couleda, as did her pal Rowenda.

I was unfortunately not a canditate for _America Sings_, otherwise Carly would have had to talk about me, and maybe … no, she was definitely into bigger guys, as we had already seen in cases like Jake Crendell, and that sucked so much.

Well, I was not that much of a gifted singer, or at least I had not yet tried. Zoey had enrolled me in the church choir, but that was rather embarrassing when compared to _America Sings_, wasn't it? Which girl wanted a boyfriend singing _Halleluyah_ and _Amazing Grace_ in the public?

And all that made me think of the possibility of the old book lying in our library having religious context … how had it made its way there, anyways? Was the library some old church with an own choir … wait, Christian civilisation in California was only a few centuries old, the library had not been around for much more than one century, and the book, according to Tyler, was a trifle older than these marks. Miles Brody had already sent me some partial answers, but they were still very hard to understand, and Takato had shaken my faith in the reliability of scholarly research, anyways.

* * *

**8.3 Competitor**

Of course _America Sings_ was not the one and only casting show in that sector, as many broadcasting corps were trying to make some clone of it, and Logan Reese's _Dingo Channel_ was no such thing as an exception to that rule.

In other words, Logan was up to establishing some serious competition for that series, and the start of it would be here at Pacific Coast Academy, with us kids trying out. Of course there was going to be only one judge, and this was no other than our resident coxcomb in person. He promised that especially girls would get a fair chance.

Hell yeah, probably only girls would get a chance, and only those ready to make out with him, such as his concubine Quinn Pensky.

But that did not mean that I was not going to try out, anyways. Maybe this way, _Dingo Channel_ would turn a whole lot lame, and they would not have to come up with stupidities like _Totally Terry_ in order to please the viewers and the sponsors, such as Blix, Daka, Sky Store, and Pear.

As a matter of fact, Quinn was a miserable singer and would never have won in a competition ruled by serious and objective judges, so this was the litmus test par excellence.

* * *

**8.4 And the winner is …**

But before the great day for Logans's new casting show, Ryan Day Jackson's henchman was up to announcing the winner, after some commercial break of the worst sort, of course. And the lucky git was … drum roll … David R. Couleda!

In other words, Carly's plea had totally rocked the votes in last minute.

But now there were some heart tearing news, reveiled by Wade in an interview following the decision: His mother suffered from some disease, and he desperately needed the money from the record contract for a desperately needed surgery. He did not specify the disease or the needed surgery, but he sounded really sad.

I guess that weak-hearted Carly was going to suffer from remorses during the next days, and that made me sad as well.

Maybe Wade would win Logan's competition instead? But that was unlikely, for Logan would not want to let a guy win, especially not a potential competitor as a jerk and womaniser, such as Wade Collins.

In that moment, I remembered Quinn's surgical abilities, covered by my uncle Glazer as signing officially responsible, if needed. Maybe Wade's mom would even get some of her latest inventions implanted … no, that was not really a good idea, given that the quality of her inventions had decreased rapidly since the start of her concubinacy with Logan.

OK, but asking uncle Glazer to take a look at it … wait … he would have charged some horrible fees just for that, just for an even obsolete diagnosis, and Wade was out of money, that was the start of the problem, anyways.

* * *

**8.5 The Sponsored Surgery**

Doc Glazer had simply skipped asking Quinn Pensky and mailed the team of Carly's web show the straight way, offering to perform the necessary surgery for saving Wade's mother. Of course he would not have domne it for naught, but there had been another idea.

Logan Reese wanted to boost his upcoming casting show by not only making Wade Collins start as an automatically qualified member for the finals, but also announce a special award consisting in a surgery. This way, he would convince all the fans of the loser of _America Sings_ and many others of the superiority of _Sing With Logan_, his casting show to be produced. Quinn Pensky would also participate and perform the best titles regularly as a foresinger of a karaoke-like intermezzo, chock full with playback. Or maybe they would hire Quinn's alike-looking cousin Camille Roberts for that purpose, as that girl was a professional actress, willing to start a career as an actress in one of Logan's dad's movies.

Taking the whole thing a step further, Logan alias — or so he featured himself — "The Casting Show Host With A Heart" was going to broadcast the surgery on _Dingo Channel_, live at the best day time with commercial breaks sponsored by Sky Store, a really great event of the most interesting sort for the world of medicine.

In any case, this meant that Carly Shay did not have to do anything to make up for having ruined a life. Otherwise Fredward would have been forced to make a music video with the loser of _America Sings_, and I supposed that this would have been worse than everlasting hell for him, Carly, and Rowenda.

* * *

**8.6 Gone Without A Trace**

While Logan was already trying hard to calculate the profit he would make with his new web show, some smashing news struck him.

Early one morning, ere the rise of sun, Lola Martinez awoke from her sleep because she fwelt some pressure in her bladder, and she was bound for the bathroom. When she looked around in order to find her pair of pyjamas, she noticed some looming emptiness in the place where her room mate Quinn Pensky was supposed to be asleep. She imagined that the latter had gone to the toilets as well, but that was not the case.

Coming back from the trip to the bathroom, Lola noticed that not only her roomie was gone, but also the corresponding luggage, making the emptiness appear even larger. Unaware of the reasons, Lola screamed like a fury, just as she had done in some of her first movies.[8:5]

* * *

**8.7 Good-Bye Letter**

Logan had been consternated, and he ordered Michael and Lola to rummage thoroughly through the leftovers in their room.

I was standing in the door frame, because I had been looking already for Michael in order to discuss the latest apparition of Takato on our campus.

Finally, a letter appeared in the middle of the room, and it had most likely been written and left by Quinn Pensky, probably for Logan, who was the first to open it and try to read it … yes, try to read it, as it was in some language not known to him.

I choked hard, as this inevitably reminded me of the stuff I had found in the library. Was it written in the same language … what was it again … Coptic? Of course I had to refrain from talking about my discoveries in the presence of Logan Reese. The creep would just have tried to market the antiquity and its discovery, just as he had done to the tomb of Charles Galloway, with the result of triggering yet another evil curse of Pacific Coast Academy. And I was tired of that possibility, which was the reason why I had always been careful to move the codex back into its alcove.

Logan shook his head, and Michael confirmed that it was plain English, and not even nerd talk about some scientific topic, but they were just not able to make any sense of it. Quinn was talking about people whose names he had never heard, as if they were our closest friends or relatives, and she wished us a happy birthday, although thet was definitely either month too early or too late.

Lola gasped and started stammering.

Michael wondered, "have you got an idea? What is going on here?"

Lola sighed, and she slowly achieved talking more clearly. "I have watched that movie with Vince, Quinn, and Logan … a movie by Malcolm Reese, and with Ashley Blake as the kid version of the main actress."

Logan scratched his chin, but he could not remember the movie although his dad had produced it.

Lola explained that that movie had featured a hidden message within a letter, where a caught criminal had left his bride instructions about the hidden loot from his last bank robbery.

Logan sighed, as he started remembering that film where he had fallen asleep.

This phenomen was called steganography, if I remembered correctly. You needed a certain key in order to be able to extract the proper text of the message from the most obvious yet bogus content.

So, what was the key? Unfortunately, neither Lola, nor Logan were able to remember the key used in the movie, and maybe this was not even the one supposed by Quinn.

* * *

**8.8 Looking For The Key**

As Ashley had been in aforementioned movie, I tried to ask her for the key, but she had not been involved in that scene at all. "Maybe Melinda Murray knows the key, she was the gangster's bride. Maybe I just have to ask her if she's back in town."

I shrugged, as every little bit may have helped, although Mrs. Murray was the embodiment of an the concept of an arrogant diva, beating Lola and even Ashley by miles, or, wait, Melinda was most inevitably what those teenage stars would become when growing a bit older, and these prospects were truly frightening, weren't they?

Ashley picked her cellular phone, and she started dialling the number of her adult friend and colleague with whom she was apparently getting along very well.

A few minutes later, it would turn out that not even Melinda, the actress, who had used the key in her rôle as the wife of the gang leader, was precisely able to remember the words. But we were referred instead to the director of the movie.

Ashley remembered that creep, a certain Dale Squires,[8:6] and sighed when dealing his number in order to get at the necessary information.

A few minutes later, there was a reply from Dale, but he had not been of competence, either, as the explanation for the steganographical key had been taken from the screen script. In other words, we would have to ask the playwright, who turned out to be … Chase Bartholomew Matthews!

So, there we were once more … Ashley Blake was by absolutely no means forgiving toward's the bushy dork's treason, but that had not prevented her from abusing Chase implicitly for her own career.

So. everything was now up to asking Chase for the key, but was he really ready to forgive Logan, Lola, and Quinn their backstabbing manœuvre that had consisted in befriending Vincent Blake? I thougt rthat asking him would just rub more salt into his wounds, and Ashley was maybe even trying to provoke this.

I sighed deeply, because there was now no way left for finding out about the meaning of Quinn's letter, although it was not rocket science, or whatever she had used to talk about during her years of intellectual supremacy.

Hey, intellectual supremacy … this reminded me of someone else besides Quinn: Miles Brody! "If anyone is able to figure the key of the latter, it is certainly Miles," or so I said to myself, "but will he request yet another date with Lola Martinez? Hell, he definitely should, the diva deserves some bad treatment."

* * *

**8.9 The Fake Sick**

Uncle Glazer was visiting me and Zoey once more on the campus, and he had got several news.

First, the mother of Wade Collins was not sick at all, or at least refused to get herself examined, from which I concluded that it had just been some filthy farce performed by Wade in order to make Carly, Fredward, and Rowenda feel guilty for having ruined his victory and his award. HGe had also heard this confirmed by Ms. Collins,[8:7] the sister of Wade and principal of nearby Palmwood Hotel School for Hollywood stars.

Wade himself had now left the country, and he called all of us Americans stupid hobknockers, whatever that was.

This was pretty good news, especially for Carly, wasn't it? There were no more remorses left on her.

Even David R. Couleda had mailed us, thanking us for having reveiled the charlatan. He had suffered a lot from being forced to liver under the same roof as Wade for several weeks, as he was one big coxcomb. In order to thank us, he offered to perform at our upcoming proms, but we would have to provide him with backup singers and a guitarist.

OK, that was quite some challenge, but who was really up to such a demanding task? David was not just anyone, but one of the most promisiong pop star of America — ever!

Wendy Gellar grinned, and she squealed at the top of her lungs: "Drake for guitarist, and no other!"

Dang! I should have thought about that on my own, but that sounded really a great idea … but Megan's big brother was always on tour, so it was not really likely for him to have got a few spare days for our prom. Even more, he was now probably going to request gazillions of bucks. For his first concert here at Pacific Coast Academy, he had requested 5,000 bucks, but then he had changed his mind because Zoey had designed spome wonderful tops for his band, or maybe just because he had been hankering after Zoey and used the tops only as an excuse for not having to cancel the concert at a school with a dozen of hot teenage girls, such as Dana, Zoey, and Nicole?

Oh well, in any case, Lola was in charge with organising the band for the senior prom, and she had been envious of Zoey and Nicole because they had seen Drake from face to face, while she had not yet been a student at Pacific Coast Academy during aforementioned spring fling concert. She would certainly like the idea of Drake performing with David at her senior prom.

But now there were also bad news from mom and dad, and those were by no means unexpected. Our parents had cancelled any financial support for my sister beyond her eighteenth birthday and her graduation from Pacific Coast Academy. In addition, the previously existing plans of giving Zoey some partial guardianship over me, so that I would not have to ask them across the ocean for many things like insurance issues, field trips, and the choice of electives, were now cancelled for the same reasons.

I had to sob most bitterly, but Zoey was left with nothing at all, unless she would have found some very well paid internship in time in order to afford going her way, even better, start her own well-going professional business even before graduating from fashion school. She had already designed so many things here, but always used her gifts for the sake of all of us students here. Using them to make fast money was certainly agsinst her principles, and this made me even a whole lot more sad, causing me to cry a rainstorm.

* * *

**8.10 Miles Replies**

Miles Brody was not yet done translating the ancient book, but he had been really fast with Quinn Pensky's letter.

The solution was simply that of just taking each fourth word,[8:8] leading to a message saying that her conversation with Callum Coozeman had made her see that being with Logan Reese was one big error, and she should never have lowered herself into such a humiliating relationship. Each girl with a brain was certainly wasted on such a coxcomb. She was now eloping with Callum who was in trouble for other reasons, and we would be better off not even caring abvout looking for her.

Quinn also admitted to having carelessly destroyed the monument of the foundation father of Pacific Coast Academy, and this was only one reason why she would hitherto be too embarrassed to ever set footon this illustrious campus again. But this was only one reason why she was unable to stay here with us, and we would be better off knowing about any of the others.

This also explained why Callum Coozeman had been urged to leave Seattle even before completing Carly's project.

Michael congratulated Logan. "Happy birthday!", and then he grinned like one true Barret.

Logan stomped his feet, growling at the same time like a wounded lion, making the blood leave Michael's face.

OK, this was not a nice situation, but Quinn was right with a few things, especially the fact that Logan was really a dandy unsuited for any smart girl whatsoever, and Cal was certainly a wonderful partner for her, the age difference in no way withstanding.

Miles knew a lot about the history of Pacific Coast Academy and its library, and thus he had already come to think about ways of the book getting into the building. He had a priori excluded any claims made by some cults that Jewish and proselyte refugees from Roman proscription in the first and second centuryanno domini had reached America and spread their own prophetic writings here. The book had most definitely been in the deserts of northern Africa or the near East for several centuries before being brought to the light of European civilisation. He also confirmed the religious content, it was either — pending further evidence — an unknown gospel or a parody of gospels as such, as it contained many terms from the times of early Christianity.

In the eighteenth century, the first examples of discoveries of that sort had become known in Europe. James Bruce had discovered a similar work in Egypt, probably found by illiterates somewhere in the sands of the Sahara. Not much later, a certain Askew purchase something similar for a museum in London.

Miles Brody also expected that even more evidence was to be found in the cover of the book, as codex bindings involved usually fortification of the covering leather with old parchment snippets. "The best way to discover those would be by using a quinnocular."[8:9]

I choped like nobody's business, as I should have thought about this earlier. A quinnocular was sort of a bundle of five telescopes, allowing for infravision and other nifty optical improvements. But now it was too late, as Quinn was goine and had not left us a way for contacting her.

Miles also mentioned Nag Hammadi, a rocky and sandy place in upper Egypt where similar codices had been found about half a century ago, and they had only made it to American and European scholars under very creepy circumstances.

OK, given all this, how had the manuscripts from the sands of the Sahara made their way into our library? Why had it been stored in that alcove? Had it been left behind by someone who had disappeared or graduated from Pacific Coast Academy before having had the chance of retrieving it in time?

The library building was a bit more than one hundred years old, although this was still before the foundation of Pacific Coast Academy which had only been founded right after the second of the world wars. According to Miles Brody, the campus had belonged to some seminary school about which he had not come to know all that much. The base of its inventory had been taken over from the seminary, only during the fifties did the school's own librarians start to reorganise it from top to bottom. There had been some lists documenting that process, but they were nowadays incomplete. The head librarian from that times had long since retired, and probably already died.

* * *

**8.11 Mad Offer**

I had been desperate because of Zoey's situation, and thence I had copied Ficus Monroe's recommendation letter for Zoey and sent it to various fashion companies, begging them endlessly on my knees for giving her a chance. Wendy even added a picture showing me crawl like a centipede.[8:10]

Two days later, I received a reply from Maximilian Madigan, the CEO of Mad Style, one of the most prestigious fashion label of New York City, of America, maybe even of the whole world.

Madigan had already heard something about Zoey and her creative products, but he had never come to see any of them in person. He was inclined to send someone over to us, just in order to interview Zoey and evaluate the chances for a possible cooperation. Vice President T. Jackson would be in charge with that task. I wondered how a guy of fourty or fifty something was even able to judge Zoey's modern style, but this would maybe constitute my sister's one and only chance, and so she would better take it as well as only possible, or else … I was not able to think any further.

Zoey was consternated, and she had got troubles understanding that I had done all that without telling her anything beforehand. So the whole thing better went well, lest Zoey would wipe my butt with sandpaper. The latter was currently in demand by those working on the restauration of the monument of founder of Pacific Coast Academy, which was incredibly hard since Quinn Pensky's premature departure for nobody really understood what ahd happened, and what to do in order to prevent it from happening again.

* * *

**8.12 May the casting begin!**

Logan's best way to get over the deserved loss of Quinn was that of bringing on his other, bigger plans concerning his own TV broadcasting corporation, _Dingo_. The envisioned casting show was now more important than before, given that it could be easily used in order to catch new girls, especially — and so I hoped — more suitable ones for him, with less brain, but more snobbish arrogance and more horny demeanour than the geek princess. But of course many things were going a significantly different road than originally planned, videlicet with Quinn Pensky as a supporting column of the new show in mind.

Today was the first of the auditioning sessions, and almost all canditates were from Pacific Coast Academy. There would be other sessions at other schools in Los Angeles, such as Palmwood and Hollywood School For The Profession al Performance Arts.

Logan had erected the umpire's chair on the socket of the former monument of the Pacific Coast Academy foundation father, and he started judging us sternly, although he had got next to no talent for telling good from bad performance. For some odd yet understandable reason, only girls made the cut, and not necessarily due to their voice, with the exception of maybe Lisa Perkins.

I dared to try out as well, but with really poor success, just as expected.

Now we wondered what the other sessions of his lame casting show would bring, especially the big finale, expected towards the end of the academic year at Pacific Coast Academy.

Due to the fact of Logan being the one and only judge, there was little good to come out from the show itself, but maybe a few suitable potential backup singers for the cool performance of David Archuleta at our senior prom would show up, anyways, for otherwise he would not want to come.

* * *

**Chapter 9 Dingo**

* * *

**9.1 The Gospel According To Judas**

Miles Brody had deciphered more and more of the ancient text, leading to his following conclusions: "The text is the so-called _The Gospel According To Judas_, one of the heretical gospels thatflooded the market from the second through fifth century, outlawed by the churches and placed under an anathema."

Aw, I knew it, I was cursed just for looking at this work, and it would have been better for me not to have found it in the first place. Maybe I should have destroyed it on site, or something, even at the cost of having to burn down the whole library and get expelled and deported to the same place as Trisha Kirby alias Samantha Puckett. Now the curse of Consuela was out to get me even more, making me end up in eternal hellfire. which was certainly way worse than Samantha's borstal.

I certainly remember the destiny of Judas Ischarioth, the betrayer of our Lord, who had taken thirty silver bucks for his backstabbing from the judges that were out for crucifying Jesus. But then he had suicided and impurified the land even more.

During the last months, I had perceived hoa much treason and backstabbing had been going on between Zoey Brookss and her friends, everyone was a little Judas Ischarioth, or a bigger one. Assisted by Quinn and Lola, Chase had betrayed Zoey's confidence by making her jealous in the most decadent manner with Trinidad Vega. My sister, in turn, had committed adultery with James Garrett, and she had made up with Chase's worst foe, videlicet Vincent Blake, as had Quinn, Lola, Logan, and Michael. Quinn had left all her friends down without warning by eloping with Cal.

This had by absolutely no means been an accident, and it was inevitable for me to draw the eclatant conclusion that I was lost … and doomed!

Of course, Miles Brody did not believe in omens and curses of any sort, so he just continued in his monotonous and cold manner. He remarked that such a gospel had already been mentioned in the patristic literature by Irenæus of Lyon, one of the churchfathers. He associated it with the cult of the cainites who worshipped apparently Cain, the brother slayer from the first book of the _Old Testament_, known as _Genesis_.

Hells bells, now I was also a potential brother slayer, or probably rather sister slayer, but I did not want to do anything that bad to Zoey. So maybe it was better that she moved as far away as only possible and as soon as only possible, and that I would not visit her again for the rest of my life. BUt this way, I would have to die a lingering, creeping death due to missing my sister. Even worse, I was not able to talk to the blond Mary Sue about the problem, because I had now got remorses for not having told her from the beginning, and we would inevitable have to argue over the question what I should have done with the old codex as opposed what I had tried to do, and then I would probably have stabbed her due to my increasing insanity and the aforementioned curse.

Miles started talking about some of the most eclatant differences between the _New Testament_'s story of Judas and that of the text I had found. "Your discovery claims Judas to have acted upon the instructiond of Jesus. He had been the only true disciple who had understood the Lord's mission among mankind."

This was very much confusing for me, and I regretted even more having ever taken a look at the hidden alcove and the book found in there. For sure I would not betray Zoey on purpose even if she had told me to, and this did not even make sense, did it?

The worst of all was that nobody left for me to talk about it, at least not on the campus.

Takato had expected me to find the sense of the gospeld it with my soul, not from Miles's translations, but my souls was now all empty and useless, wasn't it?

MacCurdy would burn my at the stake for not having destroyed the heretical book in the first place.

"Fire Wire" would be disappointed for not having discovered an ancient version of the legend of one of his favourite superheroes or supervillains … wait, maybe there was something like that, after all, treason and delivery were certainly a topic in the collected _DC_ or _Marvel_ tomes.

My fellow middle school kids who were aware of the fact that I had found something ancient would possibly have been scared as well, but they were now looking forward to and preparing the impending arrival of Fred Figglehorn, including the performance of a series of skits in the tree house that had just been completed by fiture carpentress Stacey Dillsen. This event would be very important for the future of Carly Shay and her web show, and so I did not want to bother and burden them with my own fears and dark thoughts, lest they would screw it all up, ruining Carly's renown.

* * *

**9.2 Totally Terry**

I had already mentioned that Loga's shows ripped off from Carly's web shows, and this was now totally evident. Ashley Blake had watched both, including _Dingo_'s _Totally Terry_, and she was now convinced that there was no such thing as an accident involved. "There must be a traitor among the fans of the web show!" This would now inevitably lead to mutual accusation among us fans of Carly and her good work, infinitely much worse than the aforementioned fanwar between "Creddiers" and "Seddiers" would ever be able to.

I twitched like nobody's business, as the topic of treason and delivery had already occupied my mind from top to bottom, especially since the latest message from Miles Brody. Unfortunately, many of the kids glared at me. Was I now going to be accused of treason? Maybe I would have thoroughly deserved it for having taken a look at a gospel according to one of the biggest traitors in history.

Needless to say, I did not want to let the plagiarisers, especially Logan Reese, get away with the fraud. My idea was that of inviting Carly, Rowenda, and Fredward to our campus and then sack the headquarters of _Dingo_. This way I was at least able to distract all my fellow middle school kids who had turned suspicious.

This way, Carly would also attend the impending visit of Fredrick Figglehorn, and Fredward would be able to make the video clips of the skits with his own hands and his own equipment for a live session of the web show, instead of having to resort to canned clips.

* * *

**9.3 The Auxiliary Librarian**

Miles Brody had urged me to find out more about the history of our library, following his instructions and hints he had gathered during the last year, but not able to verify since his departure to the Library Of Congress in Washington, DC.

The most astonishing fact had been about one of the auxiliary librarians at Pacific Coast Academy, during its first decade. The head librarian was long sin ce dead, but the same was also valid for one of his henchmen, and thise used to be high school students earning a few bucks this way. The book sorter Miles was talking about was no other than aforementioned Charles R. Galloway, the student who had fled from the campus in panic, ending up in the desert of desolation, where he found his own tomb.

Did Miles want to insinuate that there was a connection between the history of my example of a lost forbidden gospel and the fate of Charles R. Galloway? The official legend involved our most hated teacher, Mr. Hodgens, but it did not exactly say why there had been such a terrible scene involving the two of them. As you may imagine, I could not help imagining a parallel between my own end and that of the former student. Of course the masternerd did, due to his lack of belief in curses and omens, not even think about what he was doing to me by alluding to the vanquished student.

I already saw myself wither away at Red Stone Gulch, the punishment for having fumbled with a forbidden book which was an anathema, and later generations of Pacific Coast Academy students search for my tomb and devastate it, causing more and more dismay and horror on the campus.

Was there any way out of my misery? For that of Charles R. Galloway had even survived his death for at least fifty years, and I was not sure that it had come to an end with the expedition of Zoey and her friends to Redstone Gulch. I had to find out what Zoey had done, though, in order to arouse the ghost of Charles Galloway. Maybe Michael was still able to remember?

* * *

**9.4 Molten Brass**

Wayne Gilbert had only chuckled when I had talked to him about the message from Miles Brody, but I was sure that he was trembling deep underneath. But now he was busy with something apparently completely different, and, more precisely, the removal of the "moltem" brass from the marble socket in order to provide space for a new monument of our foundation father.

According to this nerd, the expression"molten" was not correct in this context, so he had to correct me over and over. I wondered when I would ever learn, or if at all. Waine also explained that it was possible to make brass lockets this way and easily make them look like gold or silver.

And this reminded me of a medallion my sister had been hiding in her belongings since the begin of last summer, although I was not exactly aware of the origin, let alone the reasons why Zoey had been guarding it. Was I really up to asking her? I dod not want to rub salt into some of her wounds, for she was now already in a sad state because of having lost our parents's support. The visit of Vice president Jackson, whom we imagined as a mid aged to elderly man with little to no inclination for understanding today's teenagers, was still pending, and it was her one and only chance, as it seemed. I was not willing to spoil it. Even less did I want to start an argument over it with her, one ending deadly, as the biblical discord between Cain and Abel. I was still believing in the possibility of becoming like Cain or Judas just for having tried to mess with a book written by their ancient supporters, an action supposed to trigger a divine anathema.

* * *

**9.5 The Treehouse**

Not far from there, Stacey Dilsen was about completing the tree house for Robert Carmichael, a building suited for impressing Fredrick Figglehorn and serving as a stage for a few skits with Ashley Blake.

The choice of a tree had not been hard. It was an old oak standing in front of Brenner Hall, the dormitory block of Zoey, Lola, and Quinn.[9:1] This plant was taller than the building, and it blocked out most of the sunlight. It also hosted squirrels … really big ones. And I was horribly afraid of squirrels.[9:2] And these particular beasts also left a lot of excrements, stinking up the top of the tree.

The rootf tops were basically allowing for students to spend some hours on, and this was really great in the case of Chase's, Michael's, and Logan's hall, but under these particular circumstances prevailing at Brenner Hall, there was no such thing as a pleasure. Too bad Stacey had not thought about this problem beforehand, and it was to be hoped that either Fredrick Figglehorn was not allergic to the stench caused by squirrel excrements, or that there was a way to get rid of those beasts before his arrival. Quinn had never found a decent means for that purpose.

As you see, Stacey had not thought about this problem, and she had only had the perfect static properties of the tree, its height and its solid constitution which were perfect for hosting a tree house.

Oh, yeah, Robert Carmichael had not considered the smelly troubles either, and he was certainly not quite resistant to squirrel stink. But he was anticipating the possibilities of aiming his telescope at the windows of the girls's dormitory rooms and watch them at night time. "Does Lola really sleep naked?" His brain used to melt to goo, faster than the brass of Old Mr. Bradford's monument, whenever he fancied the Latina Hollywood starlet.

Maybe I should not have exaggerated beyond any sane measure when talking to my room pals about my sleepovers in Zoey's dormitory room.[9:3] I had been allowed by my sister to do so because I had feigned being intimidated by some Japanese horror film that I had watched along with Chase, Michael, and Logan. The real reason for me to do that had been that I had been missing Zoey a lot. And this would become even worse after her graduation from Pacific Coast Academy. I would hardly survive the separation, even though it was necessary in order to avoid stabbing my one and only sister to death in a heated argument.

* * *

**9.6 Locket Of Doom**

While I did not dare to talk to my sister about the events of last year concerning Charles R. Galloway, I tried to catch Michael's point of view of the unholy mess.

And Michael remembered that they had dug out, among other things, a locket from the tomb of Charles R. Galloway upon reveiling it at Redstone Gulch. Logan needed this medallion as a proof for the legend of Charles Galloway, needed in order to make a thriller movie about the end of that student. Everyone had urged the coxcomb to return the pendant to the hole that had served as Charles Galloway's tomb, but Logan just snuck it secretly into the bag of Zoey. On there way back, they were attacked by the upset ghost of Charles. Only later had they figured that they were still carrying the locket around, and then they had returned to the tomb in order to render unto Charles Galloway what was Charles Galloway's. This way, the curse had come to a rest, and the ghost had even helped them against Hodgens.

OK, the seniors believed that everything was now OK, but this was not the case, and I knew that it wasn't. The cursed book was keeping oour school ball and chain.

Zoey's locket that she kept on guarding was a different one — or so she believed. It was a gift from James Garrett, which she had not thrown away even after separating from him. It was not obvious for me why this was the case, and maybe she had had remorses for separating from James just for Chase's sake? Hells bells, what had happened to James Garrett alias Jake Crandell alias Dennifer ever since? Even more waves of icy cold started propagating down my spine.

* * *

**9.7 The Skull**

Carly, Spencer, Fredward, and Rowenda had already announced their stage on our campus for a few days, and this was exactly the great day for the treehouse.

As expected, Robbie Carmichael was not exacctly able to bear the malodorous smell of the excrements of certain rodents with a bushy tail, even bushier than the capital shrubbery of Chase Bartholomew Matthews.

The vegetation covering Chase's skull leads me straightforward to some other stupid anecdote, well, I would have deemed it stupid if there had not been the one about the death of Charles galloway, a tale that had taken an outrageously sharp turn into the direction of excruciazting dismay and horror.

According to rumours, the skull of Charles Dingo, the founder of _Dingo Channel_, had been preserved cryogenically — a word hitherto unbeknownst to me — in the guts of the headquarters of the broadcasting corporation.

Wayne Gilbert alias "Fire Wire" was of course able to explain what that meant. At very low temperatures, and that was much colder than the deepest Canadian winters, the decay and degeneration of the cells of corpses was virtually coming to a halt. Cells preserved like this were usuful for genetic engineering. Wayne was able to talk a lot about the usage of cryogenetics in his favourite cartoons of the _Marvel_ and _DC_ series. I shivered vigorously, just as if the temperature had been falling by two hundred degrees within a few seconds.

So far I had assumed that _Dingo Channel_ was the work of Logan reese, but why was there a dead founder of it named Charles Dingo?

Wait … Logan had previously tried tho market the story about the grisly fate of Charles R. Galloway, and that had been his reason for stealing the locket from the tomb.

I would not have been surprised, had the obnoxious coxcomb now tried to market another, similar but equally grisly story, made up or not, one that required the skull of someone, conveniently with the same first name, in his headquarters. The cryogeneicalstorage was necessary, as otherwise the skull would have been shrivelled and decayed to crap within short time.

Quinn Pensky, and noone else at Pacific Coast Academy, had got both the knowledge and the connections required for deploying such a plan, if it had not been a total feint. I guessed that it was not unexpensive, but a Reese was hardly likely to avoid high costs for the sake of a brilliant show. The geek queen was now gone, and nobody was any longer in charge with the cryogenical laboratory. Sooner or later, it would decay and collapse — or so I assumed.

Spencer planned on kidnapping the skull in order to be able to blackmail _Dingo_, but I did not like this idea, and I even hated his usage of the word "guts", which sounded so filthy and icky.

Carly was not exactly pleased by the concept, either.

I had to think about the curse triggered by removing something from the tomb of a corpse, and doing so with the skull of Charles Dingo was probably nothing different. Even if Charles Dingo was a fiction, the skull in the freezing chamber must have belonged to somebody, and it was not right doing … whatever Spencer, Rowenda, and Fredward were up to. They did not believe in bad omens and curses, but Carly did. Amd after I had told her the story of Charles R. Galloway, with all the grisly consequences for the whole campus, Carly was even more worried, and she started biting Spencer's shoulders in an attempt of preventing him from committing his planned abominably blasphemous fraud. "I will tell grandpa if …"

Spencer finally gave in, which was hard for him because he was really interested in the story of the extremely cool dead head.

Zoey asked Spencer, "why don't you simply sue _Dingo_ for plagiarism?"

The idea sounded great, but the n she would have had to go against no other than Logan Reese, which amde me worry a bit, as it was nothing but a plane continuation and variation of the awkward theme involcving Judas Ischaroth, or friend betraying friend.

Carly nodded vigorously, as she did not know who owned the channe for real. "You have been at law school, for three whole days, that should allow you to show them your teeth in a legal manner."

Alas, Spencer sighed deeply, as he was suddenly no longer as convinced of his abilities.

Fortunately, there was one person in Los Angeles who would have been totally keen on defending Carly's legal interests, and of course this was no other than Claire Sawyer, future intern of the shark of Yakima Valley.

* * *

**9.8 The Stink**

Like most others here, Carly was not pleased by the stink of squirrel excrements, and she was not thinking that Fredrick Figglehorn would have loved it, either, so it was now up to us cleanig the oak along with Robert Carmichael's new tree house, a job certainly not much easier than that of polishing the brass sculpture of the foundation father of Pacific Coast Academy.

Hey, the polish had ultimately ruined the tree house, and so I hoped that we would not use detergents from Logan's sky store. But since I had already told Carly, Fredward, Rowenda, and Spencer abiut the connection of _Dingo_ and Sky Store, there was no need for insisting in using something different, as Carly would of course not have liked to support the competition, either.

Unfortunately, there were no other detergents left on the campus, so we had to order some from Custodian Robert Gordon[9:4] from James K. Polk School in Santa Clarita.

But we were already using hot water and old torn rags in order to do the first step of cleaning the tree.

Finally, Gordy arrived with his styrong detergaents. As there had been a weasel haunting the locker halls of James K. Polk for five years straight, Gordy had added some strong weasel repellant to the chemical mixture, and it was not unlikely that the same essences would likewise turn away squirrels and even racoons, which were — or so was rumoured — Chase Batholomew Matthews's greatest fear.[9:5]

Spencer asked, "but does it also repell beavcoons? Tell me that it does not keep beavcoons off the campus!" he grabbed Gordy and shook him violently. Beavcoons — or so said Carly's elder brother — were a rare hybrid of beavers and racoons. He was talking about witnesses of thatt event, and he wanted to film something like that on our campus. "But those stuoid detergents will make it impossible, so you have destroyed one iof the greatest dreams of my life, you dream murderer!" He jumped violently at Gorduy, but was held back in time by Rowenda and Fredward.

Carly gasped. "You are talking about your sick fantasies concerning the social behaviour of rodents and bears, but I am not allowed to talk about bigfoot?'

I grunted, "Carly is right, bigfoots are much more scary than your beavcoons."

Spencer was disappointed and walked away, stomping his feet.

Carly asked me," so you believe in bigfoot, too?"

I nodded solemnly.

Carly sighed deeply, and she remarked, "finally, some guy believes me … something at least. Fredward , for example, doesn't believe in anything I believe in."

Freddie grunted like an idiot, and he had to be stopped by Rowenda.

* * *

**9.9 Fredrick And Ashley**

Finally, Fredrick Figglehorn entered our campus and climbed up those Jacob's ladders leading to the entrence of the tree house. The outside did not look unusual, so the suspense increased until Robbie had presented the inside of his tree house unto the maker of fun videos.

Seconds later, Fredrick returned tpo the solid grounds of our pavement, pale for envy. "The … greatest … tree house … ever …"

Stacey Dillsen stormed into the scene, lisping excitedly, "hi Fred, I am Stacey Dillsen from Swampscott in Massachusetts. My sister Suzanne works as a nurse for St. Steve Hospital in Mississippi. I like cotton swab sticks and sassafrass tea. I have built this tree house, using oak wood, six inch nails of stainless steel, and Grizzly Clue.

Fredrick coughed hypocritically, "that is … nice?"

Stacey continued, "I am such a total fan of your video clips. May I have an autograph of yours, or maybe even a date? Please!"

Fredrick Figglehorn chuckled. "Maybe in fifty years or so …"

Stacey started whimpering piteously, for she had been humiliated once again.

But now it was finally the right point for starting with shooting new _Fred Videos_. Fredward Benson had already readied his web cam, and Ashley had been prepared for the great event by Caitlín Valentine, a student of mask building at nearby Hollywood School For The Professional Performance Arts.

Chase Bartholomew Matthews had written the script for the skits, and Fredward Benson was the director and camera man. The latter counted down the seconds. "Five … four … three … two …"

Carly started moderating the session, followed by Rowenda, and they announced this special with the participation of Fredrick Figglehorn and Ashley Blake.

A few minutes later, some break appeared to be due. Ashley walked past me, whispering, "I need a puke bag. Fredrick hits on me in a disgusting manner, I can't bear this any longer."

I gasped and choked because I had not seen that coming. For that reason, I ripped my shirt off, almost like Gibby used to do in Carly's web show, and offered it as a puke bag unto the little diva, who accepted it greedily. Then I whispered a few words to Carly, who was not a fan of Ashley and usually disgusted by Gibby's attitude, and explained why I had done this.

Carly went pale. "Fredrick is such a horny creep, almost like Fredward." Her words were full of consternation. She had supposed that there had been some flirtatiousness in the script, but this had not been the case. Chase Bartholomew Matthews had strictly been following the orders to write nothing but chep and dumb commedy, no more and no less. Carly imagined that Fredrick would have easily hit on her as well and tried to talk her into kissing him, something totally abominable and decadent. She talked to Fredward and asked him to intervene and tell Fredrick to back off Fredrick, but the director of the movie took it completely wrong. He understood that Carly had got a crush on Fredric, and that she was thus jealous of Ashley.

Thus Freddie would not do anything about Fredrick's misdemeanour.

Wasn't Vince Blake not only Ashley's big brother, but also her body guard and protectror of her virtue? He should have jumped in and beaten the living crap out of Figglehorn. But Ashley did not want such a rushed action. "Having already been expelled once for bullying and violence, Vince has to be very careful when to apply violence or not, and yet the Fredrick's approach is too subtle and not obvious for onlookers. Vince would risk getting accused of senseless violence and bullying again, and he can't afford such a thing, lest he will have to forget about his dreams of ever becoming a professional athlete."

That made a lot of sense, but someone had to do something about this ongoing perversity, and I could not help but ask Zoey for an intervention.

Unfortunately, things were not really going to turn any better, as Fredrick Figglehorn just started hitting on my sister when she tried to talk some sense into him.

Enough was enough, so I took Fredward's megaphone in order to thunder across the campus yeard "the shootings for the Fred video have been cancelled!"

Fredward was disgusted by my decision, not just because this was the end of any chance to reconcile him with his almost namesake, but because he did not understand why a boy should not hit in the most perverse manner on a girl, little wonder, as that was exactly what he had been practising for over three years with carly Shay, fortunately yet for not too much avail.

A little later, I would figure that Fredward Benson had only deemed Fredrick Figglehorn's video clips "not ereally funny" because the latter was also interested in Carly, and Fredward Benson, inspite of hitting on other girls as well at whim, considered the show host as reserved for him. It had been nothing but a rivalry between alike-thinking perverts.

Many fans of Fred videos, such as Stacey Dillsen, were now absolutely consternated, but this did not change anything. The videos were cancelled, no matter what.

Dean Rivers sent the security forces all over the campus in order to disrupt and obliterate the whole action. Actually, he had been waiting all day long for a reason for just doing so.

* * *

**9.10 Nevel Papperman**

Finally, a guy of my age emerged from his hideout, squealing "do you rue the day, Carly Shay? Do you rue it? You rue it!"

I recognised him as Nevel Papperman, a creep that had already tried several times to badmouth the web show. Somehow this seemed to have worked out in the end.

Carly was upset, and she cried "Nevel! What are you doing here?"

He grinned and replied, "I am now an official Stingray!" He showed us his wristbands with the crest of Pacific Coast Academy. Even worse, he was going to live in the room across the hallway from me. Then he freely admitted to having forwarded the content of Carly's web show to Logan Reese in order to spice up his hitherto lame show _Totally Terry_. "I have stopped everything since Samantha Puke Butt has left the building, but, as we see, this was not even necessary any longer.

Logan Reese, by the way, did not hesitate hiring Fredrick Figglehorn as the new star of _Totally Terry_, now a show featuring nothing but dumb comedy, and he also hired Fredward benson as his new technical producer for the same show, and also for much more important '_Sing With Logan!_/

Nevel declared that he had always tried to get Carly to raise the level of her show beyond that decadent comedy in order to save her from corruption and mediocricity, and that's why he had interrupted that much. "It is obvious that Samantha and Fredward are the utter bane of decent web shows. So … do you finally rue it?"

Carly sighed deeply, but she could not help thinking the same. "Yes, I am sorry for not having thought of this beforehand … Samantha has always pulled me down to her lowest level of senseless comedy, and Fredward had not been able to stop her because he was just occupied looking for more occasions in order to hit on me."

* * *

**Chapter 10 Spring Of Decisions**

* * *

**10.1 Spring Break**

Winter had come to an end, and it was now time for taking a spring break at Pacific Coast Academy.

Most of the kids left the campus for a few days, but the time was too short for visiting mom and dad in London, and, honestly, I did not really want tos ee them as they were still treating Zoey like dirt, with little to no respect for her decision.

This spring break, Mr. T. Jackson, Vice president of Mad Style, was coming to in order to interview my sister. Zoey was already totally nervous, as she had to prepare very carefully. Bit how was it possible to convince such an old creep with next to no understanding of today's youth?

Another event taking place on this campus during the spring place would be the first public session of _Sing With Logan_, where kid (mostly girls) from all over the country had qualified. Logan was already really excited, and this disgusted me, as he had effectively stolen Carly's web show.

So, what was I up to during the following few days on the campus without most of my friends. And I was too scared to go again to the library in order to prepare my due representations for the spring term, as the old book about the traitor yet hero would always be haunting me, and being almost alone twith the book in the library would be much worse than swinging with the crowd. What, pray tell, would have happened if I had found yet another book, or an artifact such as the medallion of Charles R. Galloway? The latter gave me npw totally the creeps, as just returning it to the tomb had not in all actuality put an end to the pernicious curse.

* * *

**10.2 Redstone Gulch**

I had dared to talk to Wane "Fire Wire" Gilbert about my troubles, and he plainly suggested yet another trip into the barren wastelands in order to search the tomb of Charles R. Galloway. once more.

Needless to say, this thought was very scary, as it sounded like aggravating the curse even more. But, honestly, I was unable to think of a possibility of getting the curse to become any worse, for that matter.

Robbie had once been able to purchse one of Quinn Pensky's quinnoculars, which he was now willing to borrow unto us, and Wayne had studied the blog of the geek girl in order to find any traces of her prior vist to the desolate place. But from his comica, Wayne had learned that many answers were hidden in the treasures, and wise ment would always use it as a last resort in order to renew their strength.

I could use some renewal, indeed, but how was I supposed to find something like that out in the desert, where it was so horribly hot and dry, makimg me wither away for thirst after a few days?

Wayne Gilbert had prepared many things, and he started talking about his hero Doctor Doom, whoever that was, probably someone as scary ad Doctor Strange.

Zoey did of course not know anything about my field trip to Redstone Gulch, as she would not have allowed me to go, and especially not with someone like Fire Wire.

But here we were now, fried by the mercilessly burning spring sun and blinded by dust blown into our eyes by occasional gusts of desert winds.

I wondered how Firew Wire was able to find a glowing path for us across the relentlessly raging seas of bone-dry sands. He talked about using a sextant, but that sounded like a really dirty word, so it could not be much good. Only later would I learn that those were actually navigational devices used by ships crossing the seven seas for a few hundred years.

But we had indeed finally made it, and we did not even have to dig the tomb because the quinnocular would allow us to search the contents of the whole withough having to touch anything. Of course I was not sure as of whether this would suffice in order to avoid any aggravation of the curse.

Using Quinn's fantabulous invention, we were able to see through the sands, discovering easily the contents of the tomb. The device had been improved significantly by the geek girl since their own trip to redstone gulch.

Wayne had especially not got any trouble identifying the locket of Charles Galloway, and he recognised, without a trace of hesitation, that it had been an artifact from the times of the old Egyptians, even a trifle older than the leather-bound manuscript found in our library. "This amulet belongs to the collection of artifacts said to channel the powers of Osiris, Horus, and Anubis."

I looked aghast, for I had not heard a lot about the ancient Egyptians, but still enough to get scared by their creepy stories.

Even more, Wayne also found a letter in the belongings of the whithering corpse.

I wondered whether it was something in Coptic or so, like the illegal gospel in the alcove at Pacific Coast Academy.

Fire Wire cackled mercilessly, as it was certainly written on modern paper, not parchment or stuff like that. That letter was addressing Charles R. Galloway the straight way, and it mentioned not only the book found in our library, but also a variety of amulets and other ancient relics from the times of the pyramids and pharaoes. Of course this did not reveil the sender of the letter or other imposrtant details related to the way the artifacts had taken from the red hot sands of Egypt to the glowing dirt of California. But there was one hint, explaining that the "Hammers" had been after the sender and the artifacts.

So, who were those hammeres? Wait, there was a secret club here at Pacific Coast Academy and many other Californian schools, the society of the silver hammers, or something like that.[10:1] Zoey had almost become a member of them, and that had been two years ago. But they had been all arrogant creeps, which had repelled my sister. She had probably not been aware of what the society had been really about. But the locket from James Garrett, if related to that of Charles R. Galloway, was certainly endangering Zoey as much. Being in the club of the hammers was really cool and popular, and a mile stone for a future career in the leading Californian high society, whether as politicians, actors, athletes, business managers … you know them!

Summing it up: Zoey had committed a huge sacrifice by refusing to join the hammers, and so had Lola and Michael, who had been postulats as well.

Wayne Gilbert had never been suggested as a member of the hammers, due to his lack of popularity, although he would have loved to make it there, as he had hoped it to be a big cosplay club for _DC_ and _Marvel_. But now he deemed it better that he had always been turned down. He had heard about very dangerous society of a fairly similar sort in his favourite cartoons.

But now we had to return to the campus in order to make it back before anyone would miss us.

* * *

**10.3 True Jackson VP**

We had reached the campus by dusk, which happened to be the time when the Vice president of Mad Style, Mr. T. Jackson, was supposed to arrived, accompanied by two — probably equally stiff and old fashioned — henchmen, Mr. Lazerbeam and Mr. Peckinpaw.

I was sweating all over the place, ready to jump straight into the campus fountain in order to survive.

Wayne yelled, "Lauren!", which — and so I knew — was the name of one of his cousins: Lauren Peckinpaw.[10:2]

I gasped. Was this the henchman of Mr. Jackson? Wait … Mr?

True Jackson, a vice president of Mad Style. was fourteen years old and definitely female, like Lulu. She hated being called "Lauren", and refused to call Wayne Gilbert "Fire Wire", as he used to insist in. But in the end, the scene ended with one big cousin hug, inspite of those troubles. Ryan Lazerbeam was not much older than the girls, either.

OK, we all had feared the worst, a rather old chair tooter and two no less bitter henchmen, lacking any understanding for the young people of today, but Zoey would never have imagined that Vice President T. Jackson was a girl, and even younger than my sister!

True was going to tal all alone with Zoey, and she let Lulu join me and Wayne.

Lulu was so smart and pretty, almost like Carly, but she suffered from ADHS, and that made it a bit difficult to deal with her. But I had already git Carly, at least almost, so I better tried to stay as cool as only possible. For many years, Lulu had pretended to refuse to believe in witches, as she had only come to know them from comics, especially those read by Wayne and other freaks, and she refused to believe in comic. For that avail, Wayne believed it safe to mention Kreuftlva and Takato in her presence. But now she choked, because she knew Kreuftlva very well. "It is really a ver powerful witch, and she is not like your cartoon figures. But True would not take me serious any longer, for that reason, I have to deny that I know and trust in Kreuftlva." She sighed deeply.

I was totally surprised, and I was still hoping that Madame Kreuftlva — I never made any sense of that name — was able to clear up some of the confusion left by Takato, How was I supposed to understand the _Gospel According To Judas_ with my soul?

* * *

**10.4 Zoey goes Mad.**

The next day, Zoey had been really stoked, because she had actually been accepted by Mad Style as a new steady wmployee, working on fashion for Hollywood.

The fashion label had got some representant here in Los Angeles, responsible for customers in the Hollywood business, but this one had always been lame, and True had been sent forth by Maximilian Madigan in order to find a suitable representant. And Zoey Brooks, due to her great connections to the next generations of responsibles at Hollywood, was fitting perfectly into this context — or so imagined True Jackson.

Of course, Max Madigan would still have to give the green light for the impending cooperation, but this was not really going to be all that much of a problem, only poisonous viper Amanda Cantwell, a really evil vice president, was inclined to object to employing more young responsibles. But when it came down to employing people outside their headquarters, Amanda was never really bothered, especially at the west coast, against which she had always maintained lots of prejudices.

Unfortunately, Zoey's contacts with the scene had grown a bit awry. Lola Martinez had been her best friend for over two years, but once my sister had come to know about the hot Latina's rôle in Chase's jealousy farce, she had dropped her like a hot potato and not really cared so much about Hollywood. And Logan Reese, the future chief producer and Czar of Hollywood? Well, this had gone awfully awry as well, for Zoey would not forgive him how he and Quinn had abused me in the most perverse manner in order to hide their concubinacy in the wake of Junior Prom.

* * *

**10.5 Drake For Senior Prom**

Many talents that had passed the first test of Logan Reese were now gathered for the first public presentation of his new show _Sing Wit Logan_.

The coxcomb declared that next year's qualificatory contest would take place on Trinidad, one of the hottest places in the Caribbean Seas. And for that reason, the theme of the day was Caribbean rhythms: Reggae, limbo, calypso, … you name it.

I would have completely shunned this event completely because Logan had hired Fredrick Figglehorn for his new show _What An Incident!_.[10:3] But we still needed to look for a gifted duet companion or background singer for David R. Couleda upon Zoey's senior prom. And a lot of those were probably qualified for this first public turn here on our campus, although Logen Reese was not an objective judge, and he was still a fan of Wade Collins, the charlatan of the modern pop scene. In this public turns, though, Logan had only got an advisory rôle, the true judge was thepublic which would sent an SMS to Logan containing the number of their favourite.

Also, we were looking for a bachup guitarist, and Megan had sent forth Drake Parker to this "one and only super event with lots of hot girls in swimsuits, or maybe even bikinis." Regardless of any offers to go on tour, this was the one and only occasion an utter jerk like Drake was unable to resist.

Logan would never have invited Drake, as he saw in this guy, renowned as California's best kisser, one of his greatest competitors in the hottest guy contest. Now he was very nervous, because he anticipated losing the girls's attention, at least in part.

The first on the stage was a trio consisting of three girls from Rocky Road at the east coast, but nowadays living at Northridge alias Eastridge in the upper town of Los Angeles. The girls over there were very arrogant and snobbish, more or less a female version of Logan Reese. Basuically, the girls had been expected to show up one by one, but Logan had permitted them to mappear as a trio because they had agreed on a triple date with Logan as the only boy, consisting of a dinner at nearby noble restaurant Vaccaro[10:4] and an attendence at a live première of a movie of his father at sunset studio.

Basically, only one of the girls was ready to sing, though, and her name was Cramnberry Sinclair, but she was also known as supermodel Autumn Williamns. Hwer companians were very stylish blonde Maris Bingham and brunette Patricia Perez.

The song of their choice was _When Logan Comes To _.[10:5]

Logan had got the song on his super-expensive karaoke machine, which he was now about to start.

* * *

When Logan comes to Trinidad  
All the girls are going mad.  
They will promise to treat him nice  
Make him live in paradise.

Drinking Javaccino 'n Blix  
Go down Point Coomanah  
Both mother and daughter  
Working all time for Logan's bucks.

Out on Manzanella Beach  
Logan smiles at native native peach  
They're gonna make out all all night long  
Next morning they'll sing this song.

Drinking Javaccino 'n Blix  
Go down Point Coomanah  
Both mother and daughter  
Working all time for Logan's bucks.

* * *

Logan applauded endlessly, and he suggested 9.9 of ten point for this perfect presentation.

Especially Maris Bingham waggled her curves seductively at the coxcomb. She was not only a potential future model, but also able to design fashion, at least to some degree, alsthough she could not hold the dimmest candle to Zoey. I knew that nobody was able to compete with my sister. Her mother ran a business in the fashion branch, of course nothing comparable to Mad Style, but it was the idea of Maris to compete with them at least in the Hollywood business.

For Logan, also an aspiring model, it was immediately clear in whose hands he would ever since leave the creation and presentation of the outfits for his shows, especially the female outfits, as he was also an aspiring male supermodel and certainly willing to accept this "burden", especially with girls like Maris, Patricia, and Cranberry by his side.

Then "Rebecca" alias Trinidad Vega showed up, and she complained, "who has just talked about me?"

Logan chuckled. "nobody, Rebecca, it was about the island named Trinidad."

Trina claimed, "that island is named for me! It is located north of Los Angeles, ain't it?"

Logan tried to scan his knowledge of geography in order to be able to answer Trinidad's question, but he failed miserably, so he just commanded her to sing her number.

Trina had of course made it into this recall, but she was the least gifted in her whole family. Her chosen song for the representation was a Puerto Rican Guaguanó tune. She was a mediocre to disappointing singer, but a very impressive dancer, especially for those seductive Latin dances like the rumba. Usually, the Guaguancó was danced by a male and a female dancer, daning around each other in a very seductive manner. The male was supposed to attempt to grab the girl by surprise.

Of course, Trina was only able to dance the female part, so she chose "randomly" a male partner from the horny onlookers, and that choice happened to be no iother than Vincent Blake, the fiancé of Trina's cousin Lola. Although he had not prepared at all for his rôle, the two of them appeared to harmonise fairly well, making the onlookers moan for excruciating awe.

Lola showed up with her alike-looking yet younger (by three years) cousin Victoria, usually called "Tori". She was accompanying her in order to prove that Tori and herself were two different girls, their blood relationship and close similarity notwithstanding. But she was not exactly pleased when seeing her fiancé dancer seductively around her cousin, and she did not hesitate expressing this aloud. Vincent was thence her ex-fiancé, and she ran away, stomping her feet as angrily as only pssible.

Victoria was now left alone on the stage, not knowing what to do, while Logan was already waiting impatiently for her number.

Drake Parker appeared, and he almost ran into Lola.

The wannabe Hollywood starlet smiled, "aw, hi, Drake, are you really coming to our Senior Prom in order to play for David , Couleda?"

Drake had not been informed that this had been the real reason why Megan had sent him hereto."Er … what are you talking about? Hey! Aren't you the actress of _The Scream_? The really hot one, I mean …"

Lola coughed, feeling excruciatingly flattered. "Oh, yeah, I was in that clip … and I may pay you for playing the guitar for David R. Couleda's sake. You may have a look at a picture of my new fishnet bra." She wiped some sweat off her forehead. "Or maybe you prefer seeing me live in my bra?" She smiled seductively at theyoung rock star and started blushing. "Come on, I am already eighteen!" She grabbed Drake and pulled him into a lingering French kiss, making many girls on the campus jealous, and she sensed the rumours about Drake's supreme kissing abilities confirmed.

Of course Drake enjoyed the situation immensely, and he chad not got a snowball's chance of turning down the request of the infernally hot Latina.

The blood left my sister's usually angelic face when having to watch the scene, although she had been stoked by the confirmation she had obtained a few minutes ago from Maximilian Madigan.

Tori had been given a way better performance than the girls before her, but Logan had trashtalked her voice like nobody's business. But if someoe participating here in the contest deserved the chance to sing with Couleda, it was certainly Lola's alike-looking little cousin. She had been singing harry belafonte's _Left A Little Girl In Kingston Town_.

True Jackson sighed deeply when she heard the disparaging judgment of Logan Reese about Victoria Vega. "She should try with Worth Records, which belongs to one of my uncles. My alike-looking cousin Cadee[10:6] is already a big teenage star, and she would certainly get along very well with Tori."

It was now time for our visitors from New York City to return home to the town of the Broadway and the stronghold of liberty. But Lulu promised to get Kreuftlva to show up in person.

Ryan was a bit hard to drag away from our cheerio girls on whom he was hitting mercilessly, especially Melanie. He impressed them with an acrobatic backflip. By the way, Melanie's cousin Ann Turzo aliasd Pinky was a student at his high school in Manhattan.[10:7]

Now I hoped so much from the visit of Kreuftlva, but I also feared scary things due to the ongoing anathema.

* * *

**10.6 Origin Of The Silver Hammers**

Miles Brody had sent me one more message from his hideout in the Library Of Congress, as he had researched the history of the society of the silver hmmers.

This illustrious club had been present at Pacific Coast Academy already since its foundation in the forties, but its roots have been in good old England. The only co-founder still alive as Miles was performing the research was one Rufus Zeno, almost one hundred years old. Most of the artifacts gathered by the hammers in order to obtain immortality odf the flkesh and world dominion had been gathered in one boarding school in England named Covington.

I gasped and coughed my lungs into oblivion upon hearing that name. Covington was no other than the school that my parents had chosen for me and Zoey, should we have followed then to England upon their departure.

Well, my sister had actually gone there for a few days or weeks only. During that time, Chase had grown insane and finally decided to follow Zoey at ay cost, while Zoey had decided to return from London in order to talk to Chase, an enterprise that had finally turned out as Chase's utter ruin.

So, Chase had been at Covington, the starting place of the silver hammers, for several weeks, way over a month at least. But had he been stumbling into that hornet hive? He had never been fond of the hammers, and indeed been the only one to reject joining them beforehand.

Miles Brody had figured that only one of the residence halls of Covington had been infected with the British counterpart and mother of our silver hammers, a so-called House Of Anubis. Already this name insinuated a connection to old Egyptian articfacts. Indeed it had been owned by a scholar and traveller fascinated by archeological findings in the sands of the Nile, a certain Frobisher, before it had been assumed by Covington Prep School.

Chase had not been a student residing in aforementioned House Of Anubis, or otherwise he would have mentioned this, as he was easy to scare, unlike his fake friend Logan Reese.

Miles had also figured that the society founded by Zeno was really the offspin of a more original society which the charlatan had betrayed recklessly … just like Benedict Arnold, or like … Judas Ischarioth, the traitor of Our Lord?

Clearly, Zeno had been the real murderer of Charles R. Galloway, and Hodgens had been either his henchman or just coinvolved, as it was easy to accuse punpopular and mean teachers of each and every crime and perversity.

But how exactly was the Gospel Of Judas involved in the whole business, given that it was anything but an ancient Egyptian artifact? Had Frobisher discovered it by accident and failed to figure what it was really, or had he got a clue and tried deliberately to anathemise PCA and America instead of his British home?

Maybe Kreuftva would be able to help.

* * *

**10.7 Missy Robinson**

Nevel Papperman had not been the one and only person trying to free Carly Shay from the excessively evil influence of Fredward Benson and especially Samantha Puckett. A girl named Melissa Robinson[10:8] was now joining that Pacific Coast Academy, and she had got similar interests. But fortunately, my evil ex-girlfriend had already been eliminated by officer Vega, and Fredward had been unveiled as one horny creep, so Carly was no longer under their pernicious influence. So Missy and Nevel needed a new goal, a new direction to follow.

Missy had been Carly's best friends in the times of their common life at Seal Beach in Orange County, just some dozens of miles south of Los Angeles. This had ended when Mr. Shay had been promoted to the job of a submarine commander, cruising the world and the seven seas. Now Missy's dad was commanded to a new job in Seattle, and Missy had got the choice between going to Seattle with him or to a good boarding school. She would have moved to the emerald ciry in order to try once more to save Carly from Samantha's diabolic impact, but since the latter had already been cancelled, she had decided in favour of Pacific Coast Academy.

Both Nevel and Missy had heard of the amulet of immortal love, one of the ancient Egyptian artifacts that had been hunted down by Rufus Zeno. They wanted to get hold of it before a powercreedy pervert such as Zeno was able to use it for his evil purpose of corrupting mankind as a whole and become immortal according to the flesh, enabling the option of eternal world dominion.

I supposed strongly that this amulet was none other than that of Zoey that she had received from James Garrett. By the way, he had never appeared on this campus since he had rendered that locket unto Zoey Brooks as a gift. What had happened to him ever since? Was he an agent of Zeno, or totally clueless?

Fortunately, Kreuftlva was already on her way to Los Angeles, and she was certainly an expert for magical artifacts from the good old times, as was Takato, but I had still not understood his commandment requiring me to understand something with my soul.

* * *

**Chapter 11 Kreuftlva Versus MacCurdy**

* * *

**11.1 Wake Of Prom**

Zoey' senior prom was around the corner, and she remembered the day of her wake of junior prom when she broke up with James Garrett alias Jake Crandell alias Dennifer alias … She had been granted a medallion by James bearing the inscription "I Love You, James." Inspite of breaking up, she had accepted and kept the locket. The tall blond rake had never since been seen, especially not on the campus of Pacific Coast Academy.

I had asked her why she was not parting with the amulet which had only provided her with so much bad luck, the whole crap with Lola, Chase, Quinn, even Michael and — as had been to be expected — Logan. Surprisingly, Zoey had tried to do so several times, by dropping it into a trash bin and by flinging it into the waves of the mighty Pacific, for example, but the dern medallion had always come back to my sister.

I remembered that story about tyrannic king Polycrates od Samos who had thrown a ring into the Mediterranian seas, but it had been brought back by some fisherman who had caught a fish that had happened to have swallowed the valuable piece. Polycrates had later been killed in shame, so this was a really bad omen, wasn't it? And maybe my discovery of the forbidden book was similar, and it was tightly connected to a curse resting on Zoey, for she was still emotionally attached to me, and thus my mishaps would hurt her badly.

If someone was able to help Zoey here, it was certainly magic witch Kreuftlva who had been persuaded by Lulu to come to the campus. Alas, Zoey would have killed me for having asked a heathen taumaturge for help.

By the way, Kreuftlva was not about to arrive alone, but accompanied by a teenage girl from Rocky Road named Adelaide Singer,[11:1] who also happened to be a great friend of Megan Parker and a cousin of Wendy Gellar.

Addie used this trip of course also in order to visit her remote relatives, but there was another reason. She was a fan of dark romantic author Edgar Allan Poe, and she wrote poems and song texts on her own, inspired more and more by said author. Alas, this dark romanticism had started to scare her more and more, especially the poem _The Raven_ which had filled her with dark foreboding feelings, and for that cause she had consulted no other than Kreuftlva.

The witch from New York City had sensed that a visit to this school with its ancient Egyptian findings would potentially help Addie to get along with her particular dark romantic dispositions. Failing that, a visit to Covington with its House Of Anubis would have been in order — or so judged Kreuftlva. The custodian of said uncanny residence building owned a stuffed black raven named Corbierre — probably just derived from the Latin word for that kind of bird. Of course that would have been excessively expensive, and maybe even dreadful.

Chase had not lived in that particular residence building, but maybe he was familiar with a few of the kids inhabitating the same scary hideout. He was certainly able to help Adelaide — just in case.

Of course, Wendy was the most important help for Addie, and she introduced her to the mass of pupils over here, and these included Chase Matthews, the expert for life at Covington's.

Kazu had employed more kids than usual in order to prepare the senior prom buffet, and I was one of them. This would allow me to be close to Zoey during the senior prom, and I had got the vague feeling that something bad would happen.

* * *

**11.2 Prom Night**

Kazu had just given me a carriage full of sushi for the buffet.

Also Nevel was there in order to carry some tables and chairs. He walked past me, explaining, "hey! I have got the locket!"

I wondered, "Zoey's locket?"

Nevel nodded solemnly, "Yes, that one, and Missy and I have not really had a hard time persuading her into leaving it unto us."

I gasped. But then I found it a lot less surprising. Zoey had already tried a lot to get rid of it, but for now in vain. So she hoped that those new kids would be of any help, starting with helping her to get rid of the stupid amulet she had come to hate so much.

Well, the problem is that I had only heard so many bad things about Nevel, it was impossible to believe that they would do anyone any good.

But Zoey had got no problems with them, because Missy had always hated Sam as much as Zoey had done.

The diabolic beast formerly known as Trisha Kirby had corrupted and degenerated Carly Shay from the get on, and alienated from Missy Robinson, her only honest friend.

And now the whole thing started becoming interesting. But Nevel's cellular phone rang, and it was Kazu calling us over to Sushi Rox in order to fetch another carraige with sushi and other snacks for the seniors celebrating the prom night.

While following Nevel over to Sushi Rox, I had to think again about the ring of Polycrates and whether Zoey would ever get rid of the unhealthy amulet from james. But there I had to remember a PCA ring that had been in my possessions for almost three years.

Being an official PCA item, it was shaped like a stingray chasing its own tail.

I had obtained the ring in a bet with Logan Reese,[11:2] a really dumb creep. What if my ring was equally part of the serious of artifacts mentioned in the letter found in the tomb of Charles Galloway?

Well, Logan Reese had been really stinky, and he had tried to fool me into rendering the ring unto him. But somethow, the ring had been stuck to me, just like the good old ring of Polycrates.

Maybe I should have asked some expert about it, but whom was I to trust?

Carrying a whole bunch of sushi to the prom hall, I ran into Adelaide Singer and Kreuftlva.

How did I recognise the witch?

Well, Wendy was with me, and she knew Kreuftlva already because of some random encounter on our camous a few hours ago, upon which she had been inytroduced to Madame Kreuftlva by Addie.

The scream made me startle and drop some well packaged sushi. I wanted to lift it up, as it had not been damaged in any noteworthe manner, but then it started to float automatically. There was little doubt for me that Kreuftlva was behind it, as she was one naughty witch. I sighed deeply. I was not willing to go into the closed library. I had not got a key to it.

But, hey, maybe Kreuftlva was even able to walk through walls?

These prospects scared me sincerely.

Drake Parker was walking past us, with a guitar in his arms. He was looking around, probably for Lola.

Finally, we had returned the prom hall.

Nevel was hastily arranging the tables and the chairs for the buffet. He had even prepared a few dips for the nachos. His favourite was so-called tapenade, a blend of squished garlic, capers, and olives.

Kazu's Sushi Rox was, by the way, in danger of getting abandoned.

Three years ago, the Japanese pub had burned down, and nobody had figured exactly why, so everyone had accusded everyone.

Zoey and her gang had collected bucks in order to allow Kazu to continue the sushi bar.[11:3]

Unfortunately, the costs for thsi had been a lot higher than what we had been aware of until recently.

Bradford had forced Kazu to sign a fire insurance contract, and the fees were too high to allow him to continue his pub without making heavy losses.

And now Kazu was trying to look for a sponsor for the pub, someone willing to take over the fees for the insurance.

A new management of the pub would have lead to severe changes for us customers. It was hardly possible that Kazu would be allowed to stay in charge with the kitchen, but he would most likely drop into the position iof a little employee conmmanded around by the new owner. This was particularly likely because one of the few potential new landlords of the pub was one Mrs. Lee[11:4] from Hollywood, owner of one of the most popular Chinese restaurant chains.

Logan Reese and his lover Maris Bingham had just arrived in a luxury limousine, and they were clad with some most expensive outfit ordered from Sophie Girard[11:5] in Paris for their prom dance. The latter had just won Logan's casting show, along with Patricia Perez and Cranberry Sinclair. They had also ordered a private food service from nearby Vaccaro's, to be delivered by a messenger on a silver platter.

Everyone was supposed to envy them, but for me it was just a perverse attempt of boasting with their credit cards.

My sister Zoey was here with her beloved Jerome Crony alias Olivary Biallo. They had designed their own prom outfits, complete with a stingray-shaped bow tie and gown ornations.

It had turned out that he had got a sister named Stella Rivera, whom I had once, videlicet two and a half years ago, met down by the beach.[11:6]

Stella was very nice and cute …not as much as Carly, though. She also helped with the buffet and took care of Crony's manners. The former bully was not yet secure in his new life style, and he would have to improve a lot before becoming a valuable fashion designer in the service of Mad Style.

I was totally sad because Zoey would no longer be here for me after the impnding end of the academic year, although she had been often enough an annoying pest in my eyes. I watched my sister and her future husband dance tightly, side by side, with an increasing pressure of tears in my eyes.

Chase Matthews and Michael Barret were still hating each other, because Michael had backstabbed Chase in the most unfabulouys manner by making up with Vincemnt Blake behind the bushy dork's back.

Wendy Gellar had recently become more than just a friend of Michael Barret, because of the great similarity of her own inappropriate crush on Michael Barret to those even more decadent feelings of Michael for Lisa Perkins that had inebriated his brain beyond reason for two years.

Only through the intervention of Mr. Takato had it been possible for the jazz flautist and song composer to see behind the murderous deceit, and to separate form the threat right in time. Alaso, Takato had recently prepared mIchael for getting closer to Wendy Gellar. Granted, the former Drake addict was almost four years younger than the clackers fanatic, but they were birds of a feather, and love was not bound by space and time, except in the views of certain materialists like Logan Reese and his worshippers.

Addie was now talking to Chase about his times at Covington.

As expected, Chase was not really familiar with the House Of Anubis, one of the residence hal;ls, properly because it was a bit insulated from all the other more modern residence halls. But he had seen Victor Rodenmaar, the uncanny custodian, from afar, and that more than once. "So, you are into poems? That is cool, because I like to write a few lines … plays and powems, mostly for songs."

Adelaide nodded solemnly."My absolute favourite is Edgar Allan Poe, and thus I had heard about the _Raven_."

Chase shuddered. "Poe is certainly very uncanny. I prefer Shakespeare and Milton … but you are right, lyrics and drama are a cool hobby, no matter what."

Adelaide smiled. "Oh, you are so sweet." She purred. "A dance? I like that song!"

Chase nodded solemnly. "Of course! It is a really cool one!" They started dancing slowly across the floor. Chase had not got an official prom partner at the beginning of the ball, but now he had found one, like by some kind of magic."

Wendy watched them carefully. She sighed, because she had come to know about the ongoing hostility between Chase and Michael, based on nothing but Logan's malevolent action of tricking and fooling Michael into forgiving Vince. So she hoped that she and Addie would sooner or later be able to reconcile the two former best friends that had been corrupted apart by the most dangerous dandy of Hollywood. She commebted, "by the way, some songs, like this one, have been composed by me, and the lyrics are from Addie."

I gasped. "Why has Drake never acknowledged that?"

Wendy cackled. "Really, Megan had snuck them into Drake's folders, and he genuinely believs they are his own works, although he is not a songwriter by any stretch of the word."

Drake kept on playing his guitar, and Lola was sitting on his lap, purring and looking at the rock idol like a lovesick puppy. He was still not aware of the origin of most of his own songs, but as long as he was a good rock singer, and a good electric guitar player, and a good kisser …

Michael asked Wendy to dance with him. They had only been semi-officially assigned as prom partners, as Wendy was still too youn g and subject to stricter curfews than our high school students.

Stacey Dillsen had made her prom gown with all cotton swabs and Grizzly Glue,[11:7] a very powerful way to make stable cotton swab sculptures. And she had actually found a prom partner.

Excruciatingly nerdy Eric Blonowitz, a friend of Drake Parker, had been responsible for testing and fixing the accoustics of the hall for the prom concert. JHe was also interested in our library, as he had heard from Tyler that it was one of the hugest school libraries in California. Entering our campus, he had seen Stacey Dillsen carrying a telescope. Like Stacey, Eric was a fan of star gazing, and thus he was keen on borrowing the telsecope and looking for the best place to watch the stars.

Thereupon, those freaks had decided on watching the stars together tonight, right after midnight.

Stacey had even made a dinner suit for her new boyfriend, of course of cotton swabs and white glue.

Now they were a really supercute couple, regardless of all the fun excessively perverse charlatans like Logan Reese were making of them.

Unfortunately, both of them were Creddie shippers. and I was now Creddie Killer Number One.

Eric was up to visiting our library tomorrow, and maybe he was able to find out more about the history of the school and the books standing in here.

Vince Blake and Trinidad Vega had probably been the last ones to show up on our dancing floor, as Trina had been too lazy to arrive in time, and , as we would get to hear later on, she had been stuck with her gown in the shrubbery.

Trina, inspite of singing and acting like a screcrow, was a really good dancer, and she wanted to become a professional cheerleader and female body builder, of course preferrably cheering for her Vince.

One person I missed completely on our seniopr prom was Wayne Gilbert, and I did not know why. But I had got two ideas.

First, there were rumours about Wayne having got a new girlfriend, Melinda Crenshaw, the aforementioned mad scientist who had almost blown up the whole school, using Megan Parker as a more or less clueless agent in order to punish my sister for being a fan of Drake Parker.

SEcond, there were rumours that Wayne Gilbert was foreseeing a big catastrophe hitting our campus, and that the only way to hide and take cover was fleeing into the deserts of desolation, probably Redstone Gulch, just as Charles R. Galloway, like fifty years ago.

Unfortunately, our curfew was about to close in, and it was time for us middle school kids that had helped out with the organisation of the prom night to leave our place and to return to our dormitory rooms.

The high school kids would thenceforth be forced to serve themselves, or to take turns in performing the tasks hitherto accomplished by us middle school buggers.

On my way out, I decided to inform Nevel about my ring , shaped like a tail-biting stingray.

Nevel glared at me. "And you have dared to refrain from talking about it? Not once, in all those weeks I have been here at Pacific Coast Academy?"

I glared aghast. I was only able to stammer, telling him my story about how I had come to that ring.

Nevel told me that a tail biting drake had been an important ancient symbol. Granted, my ring was said to be a stingray, because that happened to be our school's crest animal.

But maybe it was also possible to see it as a drake? Not as Drake Parker, that is, but as one of those unfabulous reptiles from all those good old legends, myths, fairy tales, and similar stories I had haerdly been able to make much sense from.

Nevel explained. "the greek word for the beast trying to swallow its own tail is _Ouroboros_." He started talking about its significance in ancient Egyptian arts. There was too much for him to talk about, and it was already too late for me to understand.

I was consternated, because I had been possibly holding an important symbol in my hands, and that for way over a year already, prior to discovering the old book in the library.

This did not mean that the ring in my possession was really ancient.

The fatigue was forcing me into some sort of sleep, but it would be unlikely a calm rest.

* * *

**11.3 After Prom**

Next morning, I woke up. Still dazed, I remembered my restless dreams that had kept me from sleeping properly.

More precisely, a tail biting monster had been hunting me down all the way.

It was time for me to pick the PCA ring and render it unto Nevel.

My room was empty, at least in the sense that Robbie Carmichael and Jacob Ross were not here.

I guessed that Robbie had spent the night once more in his treehouse on the campus.

This was clearly against the rules, but this did not mean that Robert Carmichael had to stick to them, especially not in a night like this where, due to senior prom, controls were a bit loose. Our dormitory adviser had probably been celebrating with the seniors as well, in some sense at least.

But where — or so I had to ask myself — was Jack?

Of course there was the possibility that he was already up.

I looked at my wrist watch. "Nine o' clock already?"

OK, it was a Sunday, so there was not too much wrong with it. I just needed to go to the cafeteria nad fix some takeout food. Now I opened my window.

But what was that?

I smelled the scent of smoke and ashes.

Sushi Rox had not been set ablaze again, or maybe it was?

Nevel passed by my room, for whatewver reason.

Although I had not yet really started to trust him, I needed him to answer the questions. "Nevel? What is going on? Fire? Ashes?"

The creep walked in. "Aw, you must have overslept the whole mess." He panted heavily.

"Maybe … I was deaming about your Uro … that tail-biting beast, you now. It was terrible." I asked about Sushi Rox.

Nevel shook his head. "The library has burned down. The walls and so are all safe, but the books are lost, including …"

I looked consternated. "The ancient scrolls?" I remarked silently: "After all, I have almost gone crazy over them, and now they don't exist anymore? In otherwords, I had wasted almost a whole year by going insane over nothing but a heap of ashes and smoke."

Nevel nodded solemnly. "the ancient book is lost. And according to Missy, it was all a fight between Madame Kreuftlva and Father MacCurdy … over your discovery." Was he rubbing salt into my fresh wounds, making me feel that I had caused the incineration of Harry Schneider Library?[11:8]

By the way, Harry Schneider was also the founder of Schneider's Bakery, California's most popular pastry vendor for over a century. The bakery had sponsored not only Pacific Coast Academy, but already its forerunners on this campus. It was the same enterprise that was also running aforementioned St. Schneider's Hospital, with branches even outside California.

In other words, over a century of history of several schools had ended up in clouds of smoke and dust.

And if I had hoped that meganerd Eric Blonowitz was able to help me discover the history of the library and the campus, these hopes were now gone with the stormwind.

Chief Becker,[11:9] the head of Malibu's fire brigades, had been really upset. He had been here already when Sushi Rox was laid waste by flames, and he had been fooled several times by some fake fire alert caused by Logan's illegal Japanese mobile phone. Now he was in a really stinky mood.

Although Sushi Rox had not been set ablaze again, the fiery accident would cause the insurance fees for teh Japanese ba to go up a lot because of the high danger. This was definitely the end of Kazu's work.

Then I held my ring with the tailchasing stingray into Nevel's direction.

Nevel gasped. "Oh yeah, that is an ouroboros." He sighed deeply. "I have talked to Missy about the symbol."

I glared at him, all excited and awaiting further explanations.

Nevel nodded. "See, noy only had the symbol been in use in ancient Egyptian arts, it was also used by Christian communities such as the one responsible for the gospel that has just been turned into smoke."

I glared aloft.

Nevel continued, "strangely, MacCurdy may have won the fight against Kreuftlva by incinerating and destroying the text, but Kreuftlva had thereupon converted him over to her witchcraft cult, and they are now going to be married according to the rules of some secret coven."

I gasped. "Wow, that is some news …" Then I looked addictively at my PCA rind and the weird stingray.

Nevel excused himself. "I am going to play soccer with Missy, so … see you later!"

Once more, I was left alone in my room. I kept on contemplating over the strange ring om my finger.

Suddenly, a voice in my back remarked, "you try to make sense of the Ouroboros, and you do not get very far, do you?" The sound reminded me of no other than mystery guy Takato.

So I turned around and saw the very same person that did not exist. "Yeah … maybe?" I was not able to avoid stammering.

Takato smiled. "Watch this symbol with your soul, not with your day senses, in order to find an answer."

Oh yeah, there was this command again: "with my soul!" And now I dared to ask him about the weird observation. "Zen buddhism does not believe in the soul, so how …"

Takato grinned. "I have nothing to do with zen, and I have assumed the Japanese appearance only because of Kazu and his uncle Fukanaga, a teacher of the zen of ninja arts."

This made things even much more weird. "I you are not a Zen master, what are you?"

Takata told me, "don't call me a master. Whenever you tell anyone about us, they will throw stones after you, but flames will burst forth from the stones and blaze them,[11:10] just like Sushi Rox or Harry Schneider Library."

I was now even more consternated. "Throw stones after me? That hurts!" Though now I started what he was talking about. Understanding the truth about the secrets of the ancient times would necessarily make me unpopular, ridiculed and foulmouthed by self-declared authorities of faith and society, just like Judas Ischarioth, who, according to the Cainites, had come to a true understanding of the Lord and Saviour. Maybe that was the reason why nobody liked Misy Robinson or Nevel Papperman in the first place.

But had I really understood the meaning of the tail biting stingray? According to Takato, I already had done so weeks ago. I was supposed to spread the true message of the ouroboros, day after day, night after night, following only my dreams and my conscience, good or bad, and not the expectations of him who would ever since have tried to stoke my angst.

And I had understood that Takato was no other than the Christ — derived from the Greek word _chrestos_ — and Saviour. He did not exist in space and time, ad those understanding him are deemed crazy or treacherous by the leading men of this world. That's why Michael Barret had been ridiculed by his useless girlfriend. But those making fun of the truth would not separate from their limbs in peace, but in dismay and in consternation.

Their was nothing to fear, for fire and stones only devour the flesh, the lowly prison and tomb of the soul. Thus the infermo of Harry Schneider's library had not destroyed any knowledge, worldly or spiritual alike, just its visible representation.

* * *

**Chapter 12 Epilogue**

Miles Brody would thereafter find out a lot more about the history of Pacific Coast Academy and Charles Galloways.

There had always been creeps in this words making inappropriate business with the relics and sanctuaries of the ancient, such as the father of Samantha Puckett, a most deprecable briber, faker, forger, burglar, and revendor. The society of the Silver Hammers had been one of many prolungated tentacles of these organisations.

Charles Galloway had been one of the first people at Pacific Coast Academy ready to fight corruption and decadence, and he had tried to use the amulets, rings, and writings of the ancient to a good use. In the desert, Galloway had even met Takato, back than in a different shape, and received his instructions, although he was not expected to call him a master, either.

Mr. Hodgens, a fellow worker of Rufus Zeno. had always been one of the enemies of truth, a promoter of capitalism and imperialism.

Many others had been involved in the ongoing struggle between truth and corruption.

Miles woould even figure why the tail biting stingray had been chosen for this official PCA ring.

The official reason was that it reminded of the fabulous discovery of the chemical structure of benzene, the most basic aromatic essence, by Kékulé, who had discovered it after having dreamed of a bunch of atoms arranging after some wild dance in the likeness of a ring. Logan's grandfather, back then a brilliant student of chemistry at Caltech, and one of the first student teachers at Pacific Coast Academy for chemistry and biology, had made that suggestion unto Mr. Bradford, our school's founder. But there was no accident, no matter what. The school's administration had never been ware of the deeper meaning of the ring, and old Reese had not been either, otherwise they would not have made it a symbol of an official school's item.

Of course I would never tell the public about my dreams of the ouroboros and the Cainites, although I was more or less one of them.

So, what would happen to all the other students and graduates at Pacific Coast Academy?

Zoey would soon start her own branch of the business of Maximiliam Madigan, therein followed by no other tahn Jerome Crony alias Olivary Biallo alias Marshal Olivera.

Logan Reese and his Maris Bingham would buy a yacht and — sooner or later — start living there all day long, every time a year, until the moment of dying in their stupidity.

Lola Martinez was going to harvest her first oscar at the age of eighteen for a movie for which Drake Parker was performing the theme. At that points, she was already pregnant from the rock idol, and the two of them were voted the eternal dream couple of Hollywood.

Michael Barret would start working as a song writer for Worth Records[12:1] in New York City, but later on switch back to California, joining Gustavo Rocque, his true example to live up to. In this step, he would be followed by his beloved Wendy Gellar.

Chase Bartholomew Matthews would move to New York after his reconcilation with Michael and try to work side by side with his friend, but then get hired as a playwright by the Broadway, just as his future wife Adelaide Singer. Together, they would revive the genere of the dark romantic drama of geniuses like Edgar Allan Poe nd Walt Whitman.

I would not come to hear much about Quinn and her beloved Cal, as they had already gone under cover before the scheduled end of Quinn's high school time. But, on and off, messages of the geek queen would pop up here and there.

Stacey and Eric would establish their own house building enterprise. Stacey would be busy with the woodshop, while Eric would take care of the electricity.

Vincent Blake would soom migrate to Peru, following his idol Brock Champion,[12:2] male model and star of the Peruvian siftball league. He would be followed by his girlfriend Trinidad upon her eighteenth birthday in order to become a supermodel and female body builder. In addition, they would raise alpacas and Peruvian puff pepper,[12:3] which was still illegal in America.

Wayne Gilbert and his beloved Melinda Crenshaw would stay out in the deserts and live like erstwhile Charles Galloway outside the corruption of the civilisatioon of Hollywood, of which they had been warned clearly by their cartoon hero Dr. Doom.

I would thereafter only tell one person about my dreams, and this was my future consort Carly Shay, at least until time would have come for going further. She would get a matching copy of the stingray ring and, unadultered by Samantha Puckett and Fredward Benson, come to the same conclusions as I had drawn after this liberating revelation of Takato alias the Saviour.

**_THE END_**

* * *

** 1:1**:

* * *

Malcolm Reese is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Spring Breakup_.

**1:2**:

* * *

Alam Krimp is a guest character frpm _Drake & Josh_: _Drake and Josh go Jollywood._

**1:3**:

* * *

Fujizaki is a guest character from _Bigtime Rush_: _Big Time Break_.

**1:4**:

* * *

Ashley Blake is a guest character from _Drake & Josh_: _Little Diva_.

**2:1**:

* * *

This identifies cameo characters Robbie Carmichael from _Drake & Josh_: _Treehouse_ and Scooter from _Zoey 101_: _Favor Chain_.

**2:2**:

* * *

This is Jack, a multiple cameo from _Zoey 101_: _Pilot_ et alibi, with a surname borrowed from the same actor's rôle in some third party movie.

**2:3**:

* * *

This is claimed in _Zoey 101_: _I love Sushi._

**2:4**:

* * *

Trisha Kirby is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Bad Girl_.

**2:5**:

* * *

Melanie is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iTwins_.

**2:6**:

* * *

Shane is a guest characyer from _The iCarly Show_: _iSaw Him First_, with a surname borrowed from the same actor's main rôle in _Bigtime Rush_.

**2:7**:

* * *

Henry is a cameo from _Zoey 101_: _Bad Girl_.

**2:8**:

* * *

Miles Brody is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Robot Wars_.

**2:9**:

* * *

Dr. Doom is from third-party owned _Marvel_ Series.

Wayne Gilbert's adoration for him is suggested in _Zoey 101_: _Chasing Zoey_.

**2:10**:

* * *

This refers to _Zoey 101_: _Anger Management_.

**2:11**:

* * *

In _Zoey 101_: _Rollercoaster_, Wayne had got her number, but it is not told how.

**2:12**:

* * *

This occurred in _Zoey 101_: _Lola likes Chase._

**2:13**:

* * *

Nicole hits on masked Mark in _Zoey 101_: _Haunted House_.

**2:14**:

* * *

Trina Vega from _Victorious_ is here identified with the same actress's guest rôle as Rebecca in _Zoey 101_: _Chase__'__s Girlfriend_ et alibi.

**2:15**:

* * *

This refers to the same actor's cameo as Dennifer in _Zoey 101_: _Quarantine_.

**2:16**:

* * *

Jake Crendell is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iLike Chase_.

**3:1**:

* * *

Harry Joiner is from _The iCarly Show_: _iHeart Art_.

**3:2**:

* * *

This refers to _Zoey 101_: _The Curse Of PCA_.

**3:3**:

* * *

This is seen in _The iCarly Show_: _iStart A Fanwar_.

**3:4**:

* * *

Marty Klemish is a cameo from _The iCarly Show_: _iBeat The Heat_, identified with the same actor's anonymous guest rôle in _Zoey 101_: _Anger Management_

**3:5**:

* * *

Bradford is a guest character in _Zoey 101_: _Prank Week_.

**3:6**:

* * *

Dimsdale is the setting of _Fairly Odd Movie_.

**3:7**:

* * *

Mandy Franklin is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Chasing Zoey_ and identified with the same actress's cameo as cheerio Mandy in _Drake & Josh_: _Football_.

**3:8**:

* * *

Dale Squires is a guest character from _Victorious_: _A Film By Dae Squires_.

**3:9**:

* * *

Hector is a giest character from _Drake & Josh_: _Little Diva_.

**3:10**:

* * *

Sarah is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Silver Hammers_, identified with Kyla, the same actor's guest rôle i _True Jackson VP_: _Flirting With Fame_.

**3:11**:

* * *

Sasha Striker is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iStage An Intervention_.

**3:12**:

* * *

This refers to _Zoey 101_: _Back At PCA_.

**3:13**:

* * *

This refers to _Spongbob Squarepants_, a comic by _Nickelodeon_.

**3:14**:

* * *

Paige Howard is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Paige At PCA_.

**3:15**:

* * *

This refers to _Drake & Josh_: _Honour Council_.

**3:16**:

* * *

This identified Mindy Crenshaw from _Drake & Josh_ with the same actress's guest rôle in _Zoey 101_: _Backpack_.

**3:17**:

* * *

This identifies Drake Bell with the same actor's cameo in _Zoey 101_: _Spring Fling_.

**3:18**:

* * *

This appers isn _Drake & Josh_: _Smart Girl_.

**3:19**:

* * *

Tyler is from _Drake & Josh_: _I love Sushi_, with a surname borrowed from the same actor's rôle in third party owned _Billy Engvall Show_.

**4:1**:

* * *

This refers to _Drake & Josh_: _Megan__'__s First Kiss_.

**4:2**:

* * *

The surname of this character is taken from a flashback cameo of the same actress in some third-party owned show.

**4:3**:

* * *

This occurs in _Zoey 101_: _Chase__'__s Grandma_.

**4:4**:

* * *

This refers to _Zoey 101_: _Broadcast Views_.

**4:5**:

* * *

This is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Chase__'__s Girlfriend_.

**4:6**:

* * *

This branch of St. Schneider's Hospital is featured in _The iCarly Show_: _iSaw Him First_.

**4:7**:

* * *

This is cameo character Max from _Zoey 101_: _Bad Girl_ with a surname borrowed from the same actor's rôle in some third party owned movie.

**4:8**:

* * *

Garth Burman is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Spring Fling_.

**4:9**:

* * *

David Alejandro Vega is a recurring character of _Victorious_, the father of star Victoria Vega.

He is identified with the same character's guest rôles as André Chaumont in _Zoey 101_: _Haunted House_ and Mario in _The iCarly Show_: _iPie_.

**4:10**:

* * *

The family name is borrowed from the same actress's guest rôle in one episode of third party owned _Suite Life On Deck_.

**4:11**:

* * *

This is Magic Malika, guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iSpeeddate_, with a surname borrowed from the same actress's character in some _Teen Nick_ show.

**5:1**:

* * *

Carmine is mentioned several times, e.g. in _The iCarly Show_: _iLook Alike_. He is identofoed with Carmine from _Zoey 101_: _Walkathon_.

Canonically, Carmine is featured in _The iCarly Show_: _iLove You_. But this episode is treated here as a part of a nightmare of Carly Shay, who is not familiar with the looks of Samantha's "uncle".

**5:2**:

* * *

This is Sarath from _Zoey 101_: _Silver Hammers_, identified with Kyla from _True Jackson VP_: _Flirting With Fame_.

**5:3**:

* * *

Dingo appears in _The iCarly Show_: _iTake On Dingo_.

**5:4**:

* * *

This is cameo Millie from _Zoey 101_: _Rollercoster_ with a surname borrowed from the same actress's rôle in some third party owned movie.

**5:5**:

* * *

This occurs in _Zoey 101_: _Michael loves Lisa._

**5:6**:

* * *

This is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iSaved Your Life_.

**5:7**:

* * *

This refers to _Zoey 101_: _Logan gets cut off._

**5:8**:

* * *

This occurred in _Zoey 101_: _Favor Chain_.

**5:9**:

* * *

This software is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Favor Chain_.

**5:10**:

* * *

Frazz is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Spring Breakup_.

**5:11**:

* * *

Sky Store is featured in _The iCarly Show_:  
citetitleBeck takes a break.

**5:12**:

* * *

Daka is from _The iCarly Show_: _iPromote Techfoots_ and _Drake & Josh_: _Really Big Shrimp_.

**5:13**:

* * *

This plagiarism is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Son Of A Dean_.

**5:14**:

* * *

This knockout happened in _Zoey 101_: _Wrestling_.

**5:15**:

* * *

Jeffry Norgin is mentioned independently in _Zoey 101_: _Good__-__Bye, Zoey_, _The iCarly Show_: _iHate Sam__'__s Boyfriend_ and _Zoey 101_: _Vince is back._

**5:16**:

* * *

Glazer is a multiple cameo in _Drake & Josh_, for example _Little Diva_, by the same actor Dustin's and Zoey's father, a rare cameo in _Zoey 101_: _Pilot_.

**5:17**:

* * *

This happened in _Zoey 101_: _The Play_.

**5:18**:

* * *

Quinn Pensky is here identified with the anonymous medic performing eye surgeries on Ma Puckett in _The iCarly Show_" _iMust have Locker 239_ and with the plastic surgeon of the same woman according to _The iCarly Show_: _iTake On Dingo_.

**5:19**:

* * *

Eastridge is mentioned in _Bigtime Rush_: _Big Time Break_ and identified with Northridge which is mentioned several times in _Victorious_.

**6:1**:

* * *

Wendy is an occasional cameo from _The iCarly Show_. The surname is the actress's birth location according to _IMDB_.

**6:2**:

* * *

This Mr. Bradford is a guest character in _Supah Ninjas_: _Mr. Bradford_, with a surnamed taken from the same actor's rôle in third-party owned _Bones_.

**6:3**:

* * *

The first name is taken from the same actor's rôle in third party owned _Too Close For Comfort_.

**6:4**:

* * *

This journal is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Broadcast Views_

**6:5**:

* * *

Keith Finch is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Defending Dustin_.

**6:6**:

* * *

This is inspired by Dana's behaviour towards Dustin in _Zoey 101_: _The Play_.

**6:7**:

* * *

This Vanessa is a cameo in _Zoey 101_: _Quinn__'__s Alpaca_ and identified with Tayler, the same actress's multiple cameo of first season _Unfabulous_.

**6:8**:

* * *

This sequence is from _Zoey 101_: _Quinn misses the mark._

**7:1**:

* * *

This grandfather is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Zoey__'__s Tutor_.

**7:2**:

* * *

Vandell hads got cameos in _Zoey 101_: _Silver Hammers_ et alibi.

**7:3**:

* * *

This hotel appears in _Drake & Josh_: _Drake and Josh go Hollywood._

**7:4**:

* * *

Come On Inn is featured in _The iCarly Show_: _iTake On Dingo_.

**7:5**:

* * *

This is Cal from _The iCarly Show_: _iGo Nuclear_ with a surname borrowed from the same actor's rôle in some third party owned movie.

**7:6**:

* * *

Bromwell is from _Zoey 101_: _Zoey__'__s Tutor_.

**7:7**:

* * *

Beringer is from _Zoey 101_: _Paige At PCA_.

**7:8**:

* * *

This is a parody off a statement made by Albert Einstein about military parades.

**7:9**:

* * *

This school is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iMight Switch Schools_.

**7:10**:

* * *

Dustin did so in _Zoey 101_: _Chase__'__s Grandma_.

**8:1**:

* * *

This show, along with David R. Couleda and wade Collins, are from _The iCarly Show_: _iRock The Votes_.

**8:2**:

* * *

This is the cardboard figure from _The iCarly Show_: _iSpy A Mean Teacher_.

**8:3**:

* * *

Nichola Cage is from _Spectacular!_

**8:4**:

* * *

Jordana Sporx is a guest character form _Bigtime Rush_: _Big Time Sparks_.

**8:5**:

* * *

This alludes to _Zoey 101_: _Quarantine_.

**8:6**:

* * *

Dale Squires is a guest character from _Victorious_: _A Film By Dale Squires_.

**8:7**:

* * *

This Ms. Collins is a rare guest character from _Bigtime Rush_.

**8:8**:

* * *

This is akin to _The iCarly Show_: _iPsycho_.

**8:9**:

* * *

A quinnocular is featured in _Zoey 101_: _The Curse Of PCA_.

**8:10**:

* * *

This is inspired by _Beggin__'__ On Your Knees_, a third party owned song by Victoria Justice.

**9:1**:

* * *

This tree is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Girls will be boys._

**9:2**:

* * *

Dustin's fear of squirrels is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Pilot_.

**9:3**:

* * *

This refers to _Zoey 101_: _Drippin__'__ Episode_.

**9:4**:

* * *

This is both Buddha Bob from _Bigtime Rush_ and Gordy from _Ned__'__s Declassified School Survival Guide_.

**9:5**:

* * *

This phobia is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _School Dance_.

**10:1**:

* * *

This alludes to _Zoey 101_: _Silver Hammers_.

**10:2**:

* * *

This is Lulu from _True Jackson VP_, who has not got a canonical name, only a nick. /Here, it has been chosen as one possible girl's given name being nicked to "Lulu", and the surname is chosen from the same actress's rôle in _Bucket & Skinner__'__s Epic Adventures_.

**10:3**:

* * *

This is a spoof off Disney production _So Random!_

**10:4**:

* * *

This restaurant is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Dinner For Two Many_.

**10:5**:

* * *

This is a spoof off third-party owned _Rum And Coca Cola_ by Andrews Sisters.

**10:6**:

* * *

Cadee Worth is from _Rage_.

**10:7**:

* * *

Pinky is a guest character in _True Jackson VP_: _Amanda hires a pink._

**10:8**:

* * *

Missy Robinson is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iReunite With Missy_.

**11:1**:

* * *

This is both Addie Singer from _Unfabulous_ and cameo Addie from _Drake & Josh_: _Honour Councel_.

**11:2**:

* * *

This ring is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Favor Chain_.

**11:3**:

* * *

This incident and the fund raising are featured in _Zoey 101_: _People Auction_.

**11:4**:

* * *

Mrs. Lee is a guest character from _Victorious_: _Wok Star_.

**11:5**:

* * *

Sophie Girard is a guest character in _True Jackson VP_: _Back At School_.

**11:6**:

* * *

This identifies Stella Rivera from never aired _Star And Stella Save The World_ with same actress's anonymous cameo in _Zoey 101_: _Surprise_.

Likewise, Crony is identified with Marshal Rivera from the same unaired movie.

**11:7**:

* * *

Grizzly Glue is featured in _Victorious_: _Tori The Zombie_.

**11:8**:

* * *

Harry Schneider is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Robot Wars_

**11:9**:

* * *

Becker is a cameo in _Zoey 101_: _Drippin__'__ Epidsode_.

**11:10**:

* * *

Cf. _Gospel According To Thomas_ from the Nag Hammadi findings.

**12:1**:

* * *

Worth Records is featured in _Rags_.

**12:2**:

* * *

Brock Champion is a repeated guest character in _True Jackson VP_.

**12:3**:

* * *

This spice is featured in _Drake & Josh_: _Peruvian Puff Pepper_. 


End file.
